Type of site | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Available in | 18 languages |
Founded | January 14, 2004 |
Headquarters | Stamford, Connecticut, U.S. |
Area served | Global |
Founder(s) | Steve Hafner Paul M. English |
Key people | Steve Hafner (CEO) Giorgos Zacharia (President) Ko Baryiames (CTO) Amy Wei (CCO) Peer Bueller (CFO) Tore Pein Jensen (CMO) |
Industry | Travel Technology |
Products | Travel agency Metasearch engine |
Revenue | US$292.7 million (2012) [1] |
Parent | Booking Holdings |
Subsidiaries | SWOODOO Checkfelix Mundi Hotels Combined |
URL | www |
Launched | February 7, 2005 (Public) [2] |
Native client(s) on | iOS, Android, watchOS, Amazon Alexa, Facebook Messenger |
Kayak.com, sometimes styled as KAYAK, is a travel agency and metasearch engine owned and operated by Booking Holdings. [3] The company also runs travel search engines checkfelix, [4] Mundi, Hotels Combined, and swoodoo.
Kayak's website and mobile apps are currently available in over 18 languages and more than 30 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, India, China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, [5] Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Australia, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Belgium, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Singapore.
Kayak was founded in January 2004 [6] by Steve Hafner and Paul M. English. Before Kayak, Steve Hafner, Kayak's current CEO, helped found Orbitz in November 1999 and led its business development, advertising sales, marketing, and product marketing activities. [7]
The company was originally named Travel Search Company, Inc. and the name was changed to Kayak Software Corporation in August 2004. [8]
The website launched in February 2005. [2]
In December 2007, Kayak raised $196 million in a new round of financing from a group of investors including General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Oak Investment Partners. Using that funding, Kayak acquired SideStep, another online travel agency. [9] [10]
On March 5, 2010, Kayak sold certain assets related to TravelPost. [11]
In May 2010, Kayak acquired German travel search platform Swoodoo. [12] [13]
In January 2011, Kayak shut down SideStep and redirected SideStep traffic to Kayak.com. [14]
In March 2011, Kayak began providing results in the U.S. version of Bing from multiple cities, airports and airlines in Bing's travel search section. [15]
In April 2011, Kayak acquired all of the outstanding shares of JaBo Vertrieb-und Entwicklung GmbH, or JaBo Software, operator Checkfelix, a travel search engine in Austria. [16] [17]
On July 20, 2012, Kayak became a public company via an initial public offering. On its first day of trading, Kayak opened up at $26 per share and closed at $33.18 per share. [18]
On May 21, 2013, Booking Holdings, then known as Priceline.com, acquired the company for $2.1 billion. [19]
On September 25, 2013, it was announced that Connecticut would assist Kayak with a $2.5 million loan to help facilitate their move to the Harbor Point district of Stamford. [20]
In August 2017, the company acquired Mundi. [21]
In July 2018, Kayak assumed leadership of Hotels Combined, which was acquired by parent Booking Holdings. [22]
In September 2018, the company launched a feature to help travelers determine if their luggage fits in the overhead bin of planes. [23]
In 2013, Travel + Leisure named Kayak's app in its list of the Best Apps for Business Travelers [24] as well as its list for the Best Apps and Websites for Travelers.
Time named Kayak to its list of the 50 Best Websites of 2009. [25]
Mashable included Kayak in first place for the website's list, "10 Budget Airfare Tools Every Traveler Should Know in 2012". [26]
Kayak won the following Webby Awards:
The World Travel Awards presented Kayak with the World's Leading Flight Comparison Website award in 2013 and the World's Leading Travel Search Website award in 2011. [34]
In December 2011 Kayak announced that it would not renew a contract to advertise on the TLC reality television show All-American Muslim . The decision followed a campaign by the Florida Family Association, a one-man fundamentalist organization focused on "defending American values". [35] [36] In a statement posted to the Kayak website, Kayak chief marketing officer Robert Birge wrote that TLC "was not upfront with us about the nature of the show". [37]
Epicurious is an American digital brand that focuses on food and cooking-related topics. Created by Condé Nast in 1995, it is headquartered at the One World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City where it is part of the publisher's Food Innovation Group that also includes Bon Appétit, with significant overlap in staff between the two companies.
Skyscanner is a metasearch engine and travel agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland and owned by Trip.com Group, the largest online travel agency in China. The site is available in over 30 languages and is used by 100 million people per month. The company lets people research and book travel options for their trips, including flights, hotels and car hire.
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Rome2rio is an online multimodal transport search engine making travel planning easy by helping travellers get to and from any location in the world.
Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information on the World Wide Web using images and, on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboards. The site was created by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp and had over 400 million monthly active users as of August 2020. It is operated by Pinterest, Inc., based in San Francisco.
Tripping.com, powered by HomeToGo, is an online search engine and review aggregator for vacation rentals. It aggregates over 10 million listings in more than 150,000 cities worldwide. It is based in San Francisco, California. Tripping.com partners with and displays listings from booking websites including Booking.com, HomeAway, VRBO, FlipKey, Housetrip, Roomorama, Interhome, Novasol, Wimdu, ZenRentals, Bedycasa, WayToStay, Gloveler, HolidayVelvet, 9flats, AlwaysOnVacation, RedAwning, and Housetrip. Users can search by price, ratings, location and features and amenities.
Wanderu is a ground and air travel metasearch engine that operates throughout North America and Europe. It provides a one-stop search and booking platform for buses, trains and flights through its website and mobile app. Wanderu is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
Tripfez Travel is an online travel agency and metasearch engine focusing on Muslims and Halal tourism.
HotelTonight is a travel agency and metasearch engine owned by Airbnb and accessible via website and mobile app used to book last-minute lodging in the Americas, Europe and Australia.
Bustripping is a meta-search engine for intercity buses in the U.S. It allows travelers to compare bus companies when looking for direct line run and private charter services.
Lastminute.com Group owns several travel brands including lastminute.com, Volagratis, Rumbo, Bravofly, Jetcost, Crocierissime.it, weg.de, and Hotelscan.
Busbud is a travel website specializing in intercity bus tickets.
Booking Holdings Inc. is an American company organized in Delaware and based in Norwalk, Connecticut, that owns and operates several travel fare aggregators and travel fare metasearch engines including namesake and flagship Booking.com, Priceline.com, Agoda.com, Kayak.com, Cheapflights, Rentalcars.com, Momondo, and OpenTable. It operates websites in about 40 languages and 200 countries.
Triposo is a social travel site and mobile app that uses algorithms for journey planners.
Jumia Travel is an online travel agency providing online hotel reservations across the African continent.
Gogobot was an online travel business headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company was rebranded Trip.com in November, 2016 and acquired by the Ctrip Group in 2017. Founded in 2010, by Travis Katz and Ori Zaltzman, by 2014 the company was the fifth most visited travel-planning site in the United States.
Lola.com is a software as a service (SaaS) company based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is best known for developing corporate travel management and expense software for web browsers, the App Store and Google Play. The company was founded in 2015 by former Kayak.com executives, Paul M. English and Bill O'Donnell.