Search on a mood: Aarhus startup rethinks holiday search with new visual search engine

This post is also available in: Danish

“Cozy cabin by the lake”, “great garden for the dog” or “bedroom with a view”?

Instead of just looking at facts and facilities, you can now search for exactly the atmosphere you want on the Landfolk platform.

Read also: Startup of the Week: After selling the company to Airbnb, serial entrepreneurs are ready with new marketplace for vacation homes – TechSavvy

“Daisy represents our first step into a new world where AI and machine learning are transforming how users discover and book their perfect vacation rental. By using advanced models that can compare and understand both images and text, we offer people a whole new way to search based on emotions, moods and creative ideas. In other words, Daisy gives users the freedom to search freely and we present the houses that match what they envision,” says co-founder and CTO of Landfolk Chris Sørensen in a press release.

Daisy works as a visual search engine that puts images at the center of the search. When users search for a specific emotion or experience, they are presented with images of vacation rentals that match their keywords. A single click on an image takes them to multiple images of that vacation home, allowing for a deeper discovery of the vacation rental, almost like browsing Pinterest. However, Daisy differs in that each image is linked to a bookable property, allowing users to realize their holiday dreams instantly.

Visual and unique vacation rentals

Founded in 2021 by seven former Airbnb employees, Landfolk offers over 3,000 hand-picked vacation rentals in Scandinavia and Germany. The homes have all been carefully selected for their beautiful and personalized decor and the majority of these homes cannot be booked anywhere else but through Landfolk. Landfolk is planning an expansion with vacation rentals in Southern Europe.

Read also: The entrepreneurial journey: “After negotiating our valuation, we were really hit with a wow moment!”

With Daisy, Landfolk hopes to revolutionize the way people search and book their next holiday home. The search engine not only opens up new ways of experiencing search, but also creates potential for future functionalities that can expand the user experience. The technical architect behind Daisy is optimistic about the many new possibilities the search engine will open up.

“As we move forward, we’ll use this ML foundation to further refine and improve the discovery and booking experience – like identifying the best seasonal cover photos or even curating unique collections of vacation spots. But we also believe this technology will help us internally, by making it easier to acquire new properties that match Landfolk’s unique vibe and sort images according to customer preferences,” Chris Sørensen from Landfolk.