Travel review site Kango, which brings together traveler opinions from across the web, then analyzes them using natural language analysis and travel-specific term matching to help you find the perfect hotels and activities for your next vacation, said it entered “almost beta” today.
Kango’s “almost beta” state covers romantic and family-friendly lodging and activities in Hawaii and California. For example, you can search for a family-friendly resort in Wailea, Maui and specify your budget criteria. Kango ranks results in order of family-friendliness and displays ratings from web sites like Yahoo! Travel, Travelocity and TripAdvisor.
Earlier this year, Kango received a Series A round of funding of $4 million from Shasta Ventures. The company was founded by Yen Lee, former general manager of Yahoo! Travel.
Kango could eliminate some of the multi-web site research that many vacationers undertake. For it to be generally useful, it will of course have to cover more geography and support terms beyond “before kids” (romantic) and “after” (family-friendly).
I believe the way kango is doing using natural language analysis has a great merit. In addition, the way these kangoers are doing is also on the bleeding edge too. So, I fully expect kanto to get better and better much quicker than its closest competitors in the travel review aggregation space.
I tried Kango’s beta and thought it was a good first step toward improving online travel research although I could not actually continue on and evaluate the booking part. I like the format of including reviews and showing the location on G Maps. I am sure the filters they use to help you find the right listings will improve over time, but the family friendly filter is a much-needed one in the space. I hope they include house rentals and condos in the mix of lodgings in the future as that is an underserved market. It isn’t perfect but it offers weary online travel researchers some hope.
Great Information. I work to travel the world. My husband and I married in Barbados and Honeymooned in Jamica. Best 2 weeks of my life. This site will definitly be an asset in the way we research our travel plans.
Kango is a great resource and will only become more popular with time. Thanks for the article!
I love Kango! Thanks for the article!