Private beta of Kango.com

Earlier this month I was invited to the private beta of Kango.com and have only just now got around to taking a look. I must say that, from first impressions, I’m quietly impressed. After getting around the initial geographical restrictions (a strong bias towards North and Central America), I entered a search for hotels for a family holiday in Hawaii for the price bracket of $350+ per night. It returned 33 options, the first of which – with a 98% relevancy – was the Grand Wailea Resort Hotel and Spa. But, and here comes the nice bit, as well as giving the usual brief description, photograph, etc. I was immediately presented with ratings from TripAdvisor and Yahoo! Travel (other results also include similar information from Orbitz, VirtualTourist, MyTravelGuide and Expedia), and links to 427 reviews with the former, and 99 reviews with the latter. Now, whilst I recognise that reviews have to be taken with a pinch of salt, this is a tremendous mine of information collated all under one roof, allowing the user to very quickly get a detailed insight into the individual search results that are returned. The other thing that I like is that the reviews that are highlighted appear to be the ones that are made by families (I assume this isn’t a co-incidence) so they’re targeted specifically towards my initial search requirements. Good stuff.