Where to Go? Where to Go? Do Hop Tries to Come Up with an Answer to That Age-Old Travel Conundrum

I can only describe this new application from DoHop, called DoHop/Away as a magic eight ball for travel.

(Photo by Horia Varlan)

You input your gateway, a month you might travel, virtually shake it, and the site comes up with a raft of often odd-ball suggestions for where you might go, based on random dates within the month and pricing.

Want to leave Chicago in March? DoHop thinks you should go to sunny Detroit! Thinking of escaping Denver in January? Where better to go than Kansas City!

Of course, if you scroll down there will be some more vacation-worthy suggestions. But because you have to give the computer an entire month to work with, often the dates returned will be unuseable (for most vacationers). I input New York for February and came up with an excellent round-trip price to Kingson, Jamaice ($302). Problem was, I'd have to leave on February 24 and return March 14 so any savings I might get on the flight I'm likely going to lose in long-term hotel costs once there (and many would-be travelers would likely lose their jobs if they ran away to the tropics for more than two weeks!).

Though I have my problems with the site (and to be fair, its very new and the folks at DoHop are considering a long weekend feature, which will help better pin down travel dates) I'm guessing there may be some very flexible travelers out there who'll find it useful. Hence today's mention.

As for regular fare searches, DoHop.com often comes out on top for those, making it an excellent resource to check when you actually have a destination in mind. In early 2011, rumor has it, the site will add a multi-stop itinerary feature, which will greatly improve its usefulness.