KAYAK paddles into Aussie market

KAYAK is about to be the newest kid on the block in terms of travel search sites.

Launching today in Australia, KAYAK is taking on competitors down under, and bringing its wide-reaching scale of data and providers to the Aussie market.

“Australia is a big priority for KAYAK ,” Vice President APAC for KAYAK Debby Soo told Travel Weekly.

“We’ve had a lot of traffic from IP addresses in Australia before our launch, and customers using the US version in Australia have asked for a local version.”

KAYAK receives one billion travel queries per year, and was one of the first travel players to launch a travel search app of its kind.

“We’re working towards becoming a total end-to-end product,” Soo said.

“We’ve had 40 million downloads of our app, and we want to range from flights, hotels, car hire, all the way to helping to manage the rest of the trip as well.”

The major difference to the Australian version of KAYAK is the new feature known as Payment Fee Calculator, to address the issue of hidden costs. This new tool shows payment fees that may be incurred when booking a flight with a credit card.

KAYAK also penalises providers who don’t provide fees for customers to see.

According to research from KAYAK , while the number of ways for Aussies to book travel has increased significantly in recent years, 86% spend the same amount of time or more planning and booking holidays than they did three years ago, with little change to their levels of satisfaction.

“KAYAK has been around since 2004, so we have a lot of data,” Soo told TW.

“We look historically at prices to see how they change over the years, and front and centre, tell our users exactly when they should book.”

“We can see that Australians tend to book three months in advance, and holiday typically for 18 to 19 days.”

“It was a no-brainer decision to bring KAYAK to Australia.”

Soo also added that Easter was the most popular time for Aussies to sneak off on a holiday, while October, and the first week of January were least active in the travel world.

And so KAYAK is bringing stacks of intuitive products to make life easier for the Aussie traveller.

MyTrip is another service provided by the company, which allows travellers, once they have all of their booking confirmations, to forward them onto KAYAK , who will then present them in a neat, ordered itinerary.

In addition, MyTrip ensures then that app users are alerted to check-in times, boarding gates, and more while en route to their destinations.

KAYAK also boasts a feature that works well for indecisive or uncertain travellers. Users can enter criteria such as the dates they have free, their maximum spend, and something they’re interested in seeing, and KAYAK will present a range of suitable options.

“Say you know you have vacation dates coming up, and you know you want to go somewhere on a beach, and spend less than $600 on flights, KAYAK will show you a map with destinations that fit your search,” Soo told TW.

“If you want to go somewhere more remote, or somewhere with lots of golf courses, KAYAK can search for that.”

KAYAK is working to keep its fingers in all the pies of the travel process, and its partnership with Checkmate is an example of that.

This feature allows users to check in to their hotels the day before arriving, and submit their special requests, such as floor preference, firm pillows or any amenities they would like in their room.

“The hotel will, in advance, pick your room, and have the room ready when you arrive. You just need to pick up the key,” Soo said.

“We’ve experimented with this in Australia, and it should be rolling out properly in the next few weeks.”

“We’ve seen an increase in the trend of people booking and buying online,” Soo added.

“And the Australian population are very worldly, very experimental, and want to see the world. Australians have got a love and passion for travel.”

“It was a no-brainer decision to bring KAYAK to Australia.”

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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