Lufthansa is testing the Amadeus Affinity Shopper vacation-inspiration-oriented flight search tool on an eighth country site, Lufthansa Russia, and plans to deploy it there before the end of 2011.
That's the word from Lufthansa spokesman Martin Riecken, who notes that the flight search tool, which Lufthansa calls Trip Finder, now can be accessed from Plan & Book tabs on the homepages of Lufthansa websites in Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK and U.S.
The flight search tool, which Lufthansa debuted in the U.S., UK and Germany in late 2009 as Amadeus' launch partner, enables travelers to search for flights without initially specifying a destination. Amadeus recently released an online travel agency version of the tool, dubbed Extreme Search.
For Lufthansa, travelers enter parameters such as an origin airport, budget, date range, trip duration and activities, and then Trip Finder populates possible destination airports and fares on a map for possible bookings.
"We decided to choose the Amadeus Affinity Shopper as the launch partner becasue we wanted to offer our customers an alternative search option with a more inspirational focus compared to the standard origin- and destination-based flight search," Riecken says.
Trip Finder users typically launch multiple searches before settling on a destination, Riecken says, indicating they are looking for inspiration and help in deciding where to vacation.
He adds: "As the traffic is growing continuously and as we have received plenty of very positive user feedback, we decided to incorporate the tool as a permanent, prominent placement on our homepage."
Lufthansa is coy about precise traffic numbers for Trip Finder.
Riecken would only say that "the majority of our visitors have a clear idea of their destination" -- meaning most people use the standard flight-search tool, where desired origin, destination and dates are specified up-front.
Lufthansa and Amadeus plan to add undisclosed "usability enhancements" to Trip Finder/Affinity Shopper before adding more country websites, Riecken says.
Asked to detail planned enhancements, Riecken replies: "We want to keep it exciting for our customers and our competition."