The best date picker is the one which doesn’t require picking a date. If done correctly, the browser can auto-fill your birthday, for example. In many other cases it’s possible and makes sense to guess a date and prefill the date field. Phones attempt the same with being biased towards entering the current date or datetime.
Easy. You have data available which tells you about the most likely travel dates, and you set this as the default. Many booking platforms pick a weekend in 2 weeks or something like that. This predefined field changes the task from entering a date to correcting a date, where the prefilled date is likely close to the desired date and thus requires less input/changes than starting from scratch.
