Travel search service Hipmunk adds Google Calendar integration

Travel search site Hipmunk has added another wonderful new feature to help you book your travel plans: Google Calendar integration.

The new integration will allow users to check their flight (or train) listings against their personal schedule within Google Calendar to determine the best possible times to book a trip, Hipmunk announced today.

While other travel search sites allow you to import your travel schedule into Google Calendar, Hipmunk is the first that lets you actually compare flight times with what’s already on your schedule. It’s just one of the many small perks that makes Hipmunk so much more convenient than competitors (like Orbits and Expedia). In addition to Google Calendar integration, Hipmunk aggregates ticket fares from airlines and allows people to sort them by time, price, flight duration, airline as well as “agony” — Hipmunk’s algorithm for discovering the most enjoyable flights.

After entering in your Google account information, Hipmunk gets to work helping to take even more “agony” out of booking a trip. Your calendar will appear on top of the site’s grid of flight listings in yellow. You can then either change your schedule to fit the perfect flight, or tell Hipmunk to hide all trips that would conflict with things in your schedule. Hipmunk also takes into account the locations of your scheduled events, and can suggest hotels that are close to your meetings, dinners, etc.

Co-founded by Adam Goldstein and Steve Huffman in 2010, the San Francisco-based startup has $5.2 million total funding from Ignition Partners, Y-Combinator and a handful of angel investors. The company has a total of 10 employees, including Hipmunk Senior programmer Christopher Slowe, formerly of Reddit.