Skyscanner is a leading travel search site, used by over 60 million people each month. The platform connects users directly with airlines, making it effortless to easily find and book the right ticket online.

But Skyscanner is more than that. As part of their vision states —

Skyscanner is a place where people are inspired to plan and book direct from millions of travel options at the best prices.

Aiming to be a platform that inspires travellers, their clever search options allow you to fill in the gaps of your trip details that are still unknown.

Imagine you have a long weekend and decide to make a short trip within set dates. Searching with ‘Everywhere’ as your destination, you are able to discover and compare destinations and base your decision on whichever criteria are most important to you.

The challenge

But what if the opposite is true — you know your destination, but not your dates? Say, for example, that Singapore has always been on your bucket list. You decide to go on a seven-day trip, but are flexible in taking off days from work. Which option would be the most suitable for you?

Answering this poses a couple of problems for the user. There is no option to search within a date range, neither is there a way to define the length of your stay. This leaves you with two search tactics:

Choosing specific dates and performing multiple searches. In order to compare options, you’ll need to open several tabs (or have a pretty good memory). Choosing the ‘whole month’ as your date range ( while compromising on the range you’re really, specifically looking for). This shows you a graph with different prices for each day. However, the price of the return flight is determined in part by your departure date, which still leaves you with a manual process of clicking through dates and trying to find the best combination. On top of that, the graph visualisation doesn’t allow for comparing additional — possibly relevant — flight information.

User story

“As a travel fanatic, I want to be able to use Skyscanner to easily compare dates, times, prices and airlines for my seven day trip to Singapore — without having a specific date in mind [scenario 3].”