Kayak is a meta-search engine, also known as a fare aggregator, that searches, at no cost to the consumer, for the best deals among individual airline Web sites, more than 100,000 hotels, major car-rental agencies and online travel agencies. Once you're registered in their system, Kayak will send you weekly notices of travel deals and featured destinations. Unlike Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz, Kayak is not a booking site: It simply finds the best price, then links the customer directly to the supplier for purchase. The company makes its money from advertisements and partnerships.
Site Fundamentals
Kayak's AJAX search technology and clear, graphic interface make the site simple and easy to use. It searches multiple sites at once and comes up with the results in a matter of seconds. If you're looking for airfares, simply enter your preferred travel dates and destination. You can sort the results any number of ways, including by airline, price, times or airports (it automatically searches those nearby). Kayak's Flexible Dates option lets you search for fares four days before or after your preferred dates. For hotels, Kayak provides not only competitive prices, but also facility and room descriptions, guest reviews, photos, and lists of amenities. Consumers and hotel operators are also encouraged to add hotel properties to the site's database to meet Kayak's ultimate goal of listing "every hotel on earth."
Other Options & Services
Best Fare Trends: A graph shows the price trends of a particular flight over the past 90 days, while another indicates the current prices for a specific itinerary each day of the month in which it would take place.
Buzz: A personalized tool that displays the lowest fares from either your departure location to the 25 most popular destinations around the world, or to a particular destination over a period of time.
Travel content: Links are provided to professional reviews of hotels and top destinations from travel specialists such as Frommer's and Fodor's.
KayakBot: Lets travelers use AOL Instant Messenger to search fares and availability for air, hotels and rental cars.
A Few Competitors
Mobissimo.com is another search engine that hooks into airline, hotel, car-rental and travel-agency websites to find good deals. Mobissimo has access to a large number of international airlines' sites, as well as airline consolidators, or "bucket shops," that buy tickets in bulk.
BookingBuddy.com provides one-stop access to a range of travel Web sites, including Kayak.
Qixo.com is both a search engine and a booking agency for flights, hotels, cars and cruises.
What Makes Kayak.com Noteworthy
Kayak searches the websites of hundreds of major airlines on the global market, as well as most of the top hotel groups, the largest car-rental agencies, and many of the leading online travel-booking sites. It has developed partnership deals with a number of industry heavy hitters, such as CheapTickets.com, Lastminutetravel.com, Hotwire.com and Orbitz.com. To help drive traffic directly to the site, Kayak also has a growing list of affiliates, among them About.com, LonelyPlanet.com, AOL and TravelPost.com. Kayak has also won a raft of awards, including Best of the Web by both Businessweek.com and Forbes.com, Best Search Aid by Travel + Leisure magazine and Best Travel Search Engine by the AP. It has a strong customer-service ethos and a commitment to building customer loyalty.
A Brief History
Kayak was launched in 2005 by founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia. Its name was chosen because it was "fun and easy to remember," according to the company website. Kayak purchased fare aggregator Sidestep.com in 2007, making it one of the largest travel sites on the Internet.
Ownership
Kayak.com is a privately held company located at 27 Ann Street, Suite 300, Norwalk, CT 06854
