Cape Town – Cheapflights.co.za is celebrating World Emoji Day (July 17, 2016) by launching the world’s first emoji flight search function, enabling mobile users to insert emojis instead of words for their flight origin and destination as they begin their search. 

 

In order to build the functionality, Cheapflights mapped 40 destinations across the world with popular emojis based on common associations with each destination. 
Launching initially as a prototype, Cheapflights is the first flight search engine to use its proprietary search technology in this way.

The release follows the launch last month of Cheapflights Chat – a Facebook Messenger bot configured to provide flight, hotel and weather-related results upon query, which has already seen more than 4 947 interactions. 

Cheapflights Chat is also updated to include emoji search functionality as well.

Commenting, Samantha Otter, Cheapflights’ Marketing Director said: “We want to make travel search as intuitive as possible, and delivering this new functionality furthers our brand promise to make search smart and simple. 

Personalisation is the future of travel search, and this is a further step in that direction, allowing our users to communicate with us in a way they’re comfortable. It encourages frictionless dialogue in whichever setting and communication medium they prefer.

“With World Emoji Day upon us, it felt like the ideal time to press the button on a function with which our team has had a lot of fun in the last few weeks. We hope our users do now as well.” 




 Adapted from a press release for IOL
Categories: Education News