Kayak (company)
| File:Kayak.com logo.svg | |
| Type of business | Private |
|---|---|
| Available in | English (US, UK, India), Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish & Swedish [1] |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Headquarters | , |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Founder(s) | Steve Hafner, Paul English |
| Key people | Steve Hafner (Co-founder) & (CEO) Paul English (Co-founder) & (CTO) Joel Cutler (Director) Michael Moritz (Director) Terry Jones (Chairman) Greg Slyngstad (Director) |
| Industry | Travel, Internet |
| Products | see products |
| Revenue | Private |
| Employees | 95(2009)[2] |
| Subsidiaries | SideStep, TravelPost |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | May 5, 2005 (Alpha) [3] October 2004 (Public Beta) [3] February 7, 2005 (2005-02-07) [3] |
KAYAK (Kayak.com) is a travel search engine website that aggregates information from the data of over 4,000 travel sites including travel supplier sites such as American Airlines (aa.com), Hilton (hilton.com) and Marriott (marriott.com), and online travel agencies, such as Orbitz, Expedia and Priceline. KAYAK provides search results and filtering tools that enable users to find flights, hotels, rental cars, vacation packages and cruises. Founded in January 2004, KAYAK is a privately held company based in the US.
KAYAK is a travel search engine and not a travel store or agency, so it doesn't sell directly to consumers; rather, it aggregates results from other sites then redirects the visitor to their chosen online travel agency or travel supplier site for booking. KAYAK derives its revenue from advertising and lead generation. As such, KAYAK makes money when a consumer clicks-through to one of the compared websites in the search results (for example, when the consumer is redirected to the supplier or online travel agency website) or when a consumer clicks-through to a sponsored advertisement.
History
The company was formed in January 2004 by co-founders of leading online travel agencies, Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia. The company co-founders include Steve Hafner (CEO) a co-founder of Orbitz, Paul English (CTO) a former VP of technology at Intuit, Terrell Jones (Chairman), founder of Travelocity, and Greg Slyngstad (Director), founder of Expedia. KAYAK is headquartered in Norwalk, CT and has R&D centers in Concord, MA and Santa Clara, CA. The company launched a beta site in May 2004, and launched publicly in January 2005.
Financing
KAYAK has raised $230 million to date; its investors include General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital (led by Michael Moritz) [5], Oak Investment Partners, America Online, Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, and Tenaya.
Partnerships
KAYAK maintains advertising agreements with over 4,000 travel suppliers and online travel agencies including nearly every leading airline globally, most global hotel and car rental operators, and the leading online travel agencies including Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Priceline. The company also has several affiliate marketing partnerships. KAYAK provides ‘white label’ products within other branded web sites including America Online, Comcast, USA Today, Roadrunner, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Pricerunner, and About.com. [6]
Acquisitions
In late 2007 KAYAK bought SideStep (sidestep.com), another travel search site. The acquisition included the hotel reviews and information site TravelPost (travelpost.com).[7]
Products
KAYAK products include flight, hotel and car rental searches, including additional search features such as multi-city searches, flexible date searches, weekend searches and a large number of filtering tools. The site provides searches for cruise ships, vacation packages and special promotional offers or deals across the websites that it searches. The site also provides a number of other features including: calculating additional fees that may not be included in the listed price, such as extra baggage fees; alerts for price changes based on desired price, destination and date parameters; and mobile applications for iPhones and Blackberry devices.
The TravelPost site includes hotel reviews and hotel information from thousands of online travel sites, hotel sites and review sites. KAYAK also operates an advertising network across its sites and its affiliate sites.
Sites and countries
| USA | kayak.com, sidestep.com, travelpost.com |
| Denmark | www.dk.kayak.com |
| Finland | www.fi.kayak.com |
| France | www.kayak.fr |
| Germany | www.de.kayak.com |
| India | www.kayak.co.in |
| Italy | www.kayak.it |
| Norway | www.no.kayak.com |
| Spain | www.kayak.es |
| Sweden | www.se.kayak.com |
| United Kingdom | www.kayak.co.uk |
Technology
Kayak is built on a Java, Apache and Linux platform. It uses XML-HTTP and Javascript to create a rich UI. [8]
References
- ^ "Kayak home page". Kayak.com. Retrieved 2009-08-03.
- ^ Company Sources
- ^ a b c "Corporate Backgrounder". Kayak.com. Retrieved 2009-03-06.
- ^ "kayak.com - Traffic Details". Alexa. Retrieved 2009-03-11.
- ^ "Sequoia Capital provides funding for Kayak.com". Sequoia Capital. Retrieved 2009-08-03.
- ^ "Kayak.com Affiliates". Kayak.com. Retrieved 2009-08-03.
- ^ "Kayak.com merges with Sidestep.com".
- ^ "Kayak.com - Technology".
External links
- Kayak.com official website
- America Online aims to be in vanguard of Internet travel - Associated Press
- Struggling upstream - Forbes.com
- Best of the Web Travel sites – Forbes.com
- Online shopping sites fight customer bailouts -- International Herald Tribune
- 2009 Webby Awards
- 50 Essential Travel Tips – Times.com