Newsweek reports on kayak.com
A Newsweek report this week looks at Kayak.com, a travel site that has been in beta since last fall. It doesn't actually sound a great leap forward, but it has some heavyweights behind it, and this is Newsweek reporting. And they are making their money from selling traffic onward, rather than, as is customary in travel, getting a booking commission. It has a spartan Google-esque interface.
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the creative minds behind the formation of the largest travel sites (Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia) pooled their collective wisdom to devise a new model.... The site would not actually sell anything - rather it would help consumers find products and services from other websites.
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The way we get paid is a lot like the way Google gets paid, so when we hand someone off to another Web site that has its products on our site, we get paid a small referral fee.
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Ultimately, what we were trying to do at Orbitz was to sell you something. At Kayak we're not trying to sell you something. We don't actually provide the booking services, so we're one step further removed. We don't have a point of view on what you buy—American versus United—or, frankly, where you buy it, AA.com or even Orbitz.
And, as is the wont of business plans, they are there to help the customer.
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The best is yet to come as Kayak.com is committed to helping consumers make informed travel decisions.
- Y! MyWeb
Travel Comparison Engines
Comparing travel products is the next inevitable evolution for the major comparison engine sites. I hadn't heard of Kayak before. Thanks for drawing our attention to this one Cornwall. There are quite a few others on the market at present such as TravelSupermarket.com and TravelJungle. Even Kelkoo now has a hotel comparison engine.
However, I am not impressed with current products. I do not think they actually give the punter the service they purport to offer. The biggest problem IMO is that the price shown is rarely the actual price you pay. I did a few searches for hotels. By the time I clicked through to suppliers' website and entered the final stage of the booking process the actual price of the hotel in many cases had increased by 25%-50% with service/booking fees, etc.
I think current products will improve over time and they will take a significant share of the market but most have a long way to go at presnt
BTW, I have another agenda. We are building our own - and it's much better than current engines!! :)
Kayak.com CEO in Newsweek
>>The biggest problem IMO is
>The biggest problem IMO is that the price shown is rarely the actual price you pay.
This really bugs me, real time queries should always be accurate but even when it's a daily feed there's no excuse for the teletext syndrome (when you have a price so good it's not conceivably genuine for more than 1 holiday as a teaser).
The first travel aggregator to become a household name is going to clean up - it'll be lastminute without the stresses of admin - and the whole of the battle is in the marketing IMO, since the tech side really doesn't have to be groundbreaking.
BTW so are we :) I suspect everyone in travel is. You just have to pick your niche and hope you dominate it before anyone else gets there.
Sidestep.com & Farechase are the other "two"
The big ones I've seen mentioned previously similar to Kayak.com are Sidestep.com & Farchase (now owned by Yahoo!).
Though I'm not sure on the particulars of the business models of each, the idea of comparison shopping for travel does make sense.
Will be interesting to see how long Kayak.com keeps their spartan interface, others like tripadvisor.com have done well by SEO, me thinks that Kayak would follow suit in that regard...else, how do they build up momentum?