Hipmunks are nothing if not agile.
On Aug. 5, just about a week after the debut of Google Hotel Finder, with its hotel search by shape feature, Hipmunk introduced a way to refine your hotel search by manipulating a rectangle on a Google Map.
For the record, Hipmunk was working on its rival feature before Google rolled out Google Hotel Finder July 28, says Hipmunk spokeswoman Jacqueline Tanzella.
Once you enter your hotel search information on the Hipmunk homepage and view the search results page, you'll see an icon to the left of the Amenities drop-down menu.
Click on the icon and a rectangle appears on the map with blue (average), red (pricey) and green (cheap) dots depicting hotels inside the rectangle Details about the respective hotels are in the column at left.
You can drag the rectangle to a different position on the map or grab the rectangle's corners to narrow or enlarge your hotel search.
Hotels outside the rectangle go missing from the hotel list at left.
Hipmunk has added a nice wrinkle, informing you at the bottom of the hotel list how many hotels are not shown because they are outside the rectangle.
So, if you want to get a broader view of the hotel scene, just click on that message about the missing hotels and all of them will reappear in the list and on the map.
Tanzella says narrowing your hotel search by rectangle/geography is just another means for Hipmunk to optimize users' hotel searches and to make them easier.
Hipmunk, which wrote about its new "narrow down" features in a blog post, also now enables users to refine their hotel searches in the hotel list and on the map by hotel chain.
So, now Google and Hipmunk among the travel metasearchers have introduced hotel search by geometrical shapes. And HotPads has offered Lasso Search for apartment rentals since March.
All of this, well, borders on a trend.