| iCruise boosts cruise search power

iCruise.com’s new Cruise Finder
Plus now enables consumers to
search for cruises using ‘natural
language’ phrases.
EVATURE, a leading provider of free-text
search technology for the travel industry, has
announced an expansion into cruise search
capabilities, which allows consumers to search
for cruises using ‘free text’, or ‘natural
language’ phrases.
Based on this technology, iCruise.com, a
cruise travel retailer in the US, has today
launched Cruise Finder Plus, an industry-first
free-text cruise search tool.
Cruise Finder Plus allows users to search in
complete, natural-language phrases with as
much detail as they like.
For example, a search for: “Mediterranean
cruises from Istanbul in July on a tall ship” or
“Disney cruises to Alaska on August 18” will
return real-time search results similar to
traditional search methods.
Barry Volinskey, co-founder of Evature, said
EVA’s expanded cruise capabilities would offer
consumers “the best travel search experience.”
The new cruise search capabilities are in
addition to Evature’s current support of flight
and hotel free-text searches offered through
the EVA service.
Evature also offers an Android application
enabling hotel search via voice.
This application will become available to
open source on 30 Apr, making it easier for
developers to add voice search capabilities to
their mobile travel apps.
Although iCruise doesn’t have an Australian
operation, interestingly the icruise.com.au domain
name currently directs to NRMA Travel’s Cruise
Spirit website – while the Travel Compensation
Fund also confirmed the registration of a
Queensland agency called iCruise and Travel.