Kayak is celebrating 170,000+ downloads of its iPad application in little under three months by throwing its also well received Explore tool into the system.
The release of the map-driven search tool on Kayak in May 2010 draw plenty of praise in the consumer tech world, although industry watchers will have seen some similarities between it and the Amadeus Affinity Shopper, Cartrawler's project with Nokia and others.
One criticism of map-based search tools is that sometimes the enjoyment of browsing a large map is often lost through the use of a mouse and on the web.
Throwing the tool onto a touch and full-screen device such as the iPad may have fixed some of the those concerns.
Chief marketing officer Robert Birge says a new hotel search system for the Kayak iPad app is also due to be released in the coming months.