A room with a view: understanding users' stages in picking a hotel online.

We describe how we built a model for user decision-making during local search tasks, specifically hotels. We differentiate between affective and functional needs and identify the following stages and related information needs: 0. Lay of the land; 1. Generating options; 2. Scanning for attractors and detractors; 3. Due diligence. We contrast this framework with existing consumer decision-making models. We close by describing how this model influenced the development of the recently launched experiment, Google Hotel Finder.