Holiday homes platform launches ‘global first’ visual search engine

Discover your Dream Gateway with Daisy

Danish startup Landfolk has launched a visual search engine for holiday homes.

Named Daisy, the feature invites users to search for their dream destinations. They can enter endless prompts, from “a luxurious room overlooking the ocean” to “a cosy cabin in the mountains.”

After ingesting a query, the feature spits back images linked to properties on the platform. Users can then click-through for further details on the home.

2. Creativity and Inspiration

Landfolk believes the tool is the first visual search engine in the travel industry. The startup expects it to inspire not only holiday choices, but also home design ideas.

Chris Sørensen, Landfolk’s co-founder and CTO, said the search engine harnesses a multi-modal approach.

“We use vision and language models trained on our listing images,” he told TNW.

“This setup allows us to do image-to-image or text-to-image similarity searches without the need for us to extensively tag our images.”

3.Landfolk’s holiday homes plan

Landfolk was founded in 2021 by seven former colleagues at Airbnb.

The startup introduced a new marketplace for premium holiday homes. Each home is handpicked based on four criteria: aesthetics, personality, quality, and location.

After launching in Denmark, the platform expanded across Scandinavia and Germany. The next target is southern Europe.

In July, the startup raised €10.3mn in Series A funding. The company said the investment would “fuel Landfolk’s commitment to innovation.” The new search engine is testament to that ambition.

Landform now plans to built on this machine learning foundation. Sørensen envisions AI finding the best seasonal cover photos and curating collections of holiday homes.

“We also believe this technology will assist us internally, making it easier to acquire new homes that match Landfolk’s unique vibe, and to sort images according to customer preferences,” he said.