Niche Travel

IF YOU THINK finding flights, particularly long-haul ones which involve a variety of airport and stopover options, is a headache, then check out flight search website Hipmunk.

A tiny rival to travel aggregator sites such as Kayak and Orbitz, its mission is to take the “agony” out of travel planning. And it succeeds.

Punch in your preferred destinations and dates and it gives you all your flight options in a beautifully simple visual grid, with colour-coded bars running horizontally that let you know at a glance which is the shortest, most direct route.

You can tailor the results precisely too, filtering your searches so that you only get morning arrivals for example, filter out red-eye flights, or request only red eyes, if that suits you better.

Along the left-hand column, you get the prices.

All in all, it ensures you get the quickest, easiest flight schedule, with the minimum of fuss. With one very deliberate exception.

While Hipmunk is very much a consumer-oriented product, it has just made a cunning tilt at the corporate market, or at least, one very distinct element of it – the executive travel planner who hates their boss.

Hipmunk has just added a “spite” button to its website. Press it, and the beleaguered, unappreciated or simply malevolent executive travel planner can make sure their boss gets the worst possible schedule for their business or leisure trip. That is, the one with the worst flight times, the longest layovers and, all in all, the most miserable flight experience possible.

Be afraid, frequent business flyers. But most of all, be nice to the person who books your flights.

See hipmunk.com.