Online travel and leisure retailer lastminute.com has come up with a new on-site merchandising platform that utilises Google maps, customer search, refinement and recommendation tools.

The ‘inspire me’ platform allows users to browse online for deals that best match the type of city break they are looking for. The objective is to ensure that relevant results are returned every time, and overall improve the search and engagement experience for consumers.

“Many of our customers don’t have fixed ideas about their destination when they’re searching online for the best deals. We wanted to provide them with a creatively designed search interface that’s fun and easy to use,” said Mark Maddock, managing director UK at lastminute.com. The company worked with e-commerce marketing specialist FusePump for this initiative.

Lastminute.com’s ‘lifestyle’ website attracts 2.5 million visitors each week.

User Interface

The platform, which is powered by FusePump’s data feed extraction technology, recommends city break destinations based on user-defined criteria including budget and timescale, as well as attributes such as culture, cuisine, nightlife, pampering and romance.

The user interface comprises three widgets: a search engine that allows users to specify budget and timescale, as well as rank their preferences; an interactive map based on the Google API that dynamically displays destinations; and a search results widget providing package details, further recommendations and flight and hotel options.

The unit is powered using FusePump’s product data feed that contains lastminute.com’s inventory of city breaks. In other online marketing applications, the city breaks data feed converts click to buy consumers at around three percent, according to a release.