Interesting departure for metasearch site Skyscanner with news that its newly formed labs team have developed a trip planning service for ski holidays.
Currently viewed internally as an experiment - but clearly lots of time and effort already notched up - the new ski channel is more than a metasearch engine for flights, hotels, transfers to resorts and equipment hire for ski holidays.
The system (dubbed Snowscanner by the labs team) allows users to create a number of different trip options and store them on the site.
Once a trip is finalised the user is sent off in the usual metasearch fashion to the supplier site for booking.
Skyscanner is working with a number of partners for product including Travel Horizon and Hotelscombined for the accommodation, Vavroom for transfers and Snow Rental for equipment hire.
The flights element comes from the existing air content database within Skyscanner.
Skyscanner says the trip planning technology could eventually be extended to the main site, after evaluating it on the ski channel. Clearly other specialist travel products could be given similar attention through dedicated channels and functionality in the future.
Tom Williams, who has spent the past three months building the system and is overseeing the labs projects for Skyscanner, says the next stage will be to integrate Facebook Connect into the site (similar to the TripAdvisor Trip Friends tool) so users can share trips around their networks and invite feedback and changes to itineraries.