Be ‘appy to book your next holiday

Booking a holiday is no longer exciting. There, I?ve said it.

Those of us over a certain age will remember (with a heavy dose of nostalgia) the excitement we felt when choosing and booking a holiday meant actually going to a travel agency, longingly poring over page after page of brochures and dealing face-to-face with a real-life agent.

Some of us might even recall the hours of fun you could have browsing all the holiday offers on our televisions through the Teletext (remember that?!). It was a time when, inspired by the pictures and descriptions in front of us, we could drift off and live the life of a jetsetter vicariously. But nowadays, thanks to the array of holiday booking websites, choosing and booking a holiday is a clinical and impersonal task ? a process of ticking and clicking boxes. It can be done in a lunch break.

There?s an innovative new app on the scene, however, which aims to bring back the wanderlust associated with choosing your next holiday destination. Hilton Hotels, in collaboration with Cambridge University, has launched its ?Holiday Matchmaker? Facebook app, which analyses a user?s social media ?likes? to reveal a traveller personality.

Following the analysis, the results will reveal what kind of traveller they are and the app will handpick the destinations best suited to their taste. Adding to this, it will even recommend friends that would make suitable travel partners.

Hilton Worldwide vice president of marketing, Aligi Gardenghi remarked: ?Consumers are almost spoilt for choice in today?s travel market. The Holiday Matchmaker Facebook app avoids that one-holiday-fits-all approach to suggest a bespoke location based on some pretty heavyweight technology behind the scenes.

?Thanks to the researchers at the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, we can recommend destinations and other experiences based on a deeper, psychological understanding of our audience for the very first time.?

Not that the PA Life team condones daydreaming in the office, but go ahead ? be inspired again.