New Skyscanner site in Beta

Check it out the new Skyscanner website. Explanation of features.

Results page:

Route map:

Busy week in meta search land.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: skyscanner

Challenges for Mr Kayak Europe?

Kayak has moved today to appoint its first European and Asian managing director, namely Faisal Galaria, a seasoned global exec from Skype, FON and most recently jaman.com.

It's a critical position for Kayak, let's no beat around the bush here.

After receiving plenty of plaudits for its user interface and Ajax-heavy gadgets - a Travolution Award in 2008, in particular - it is now time to start delivering on the huge expectation.

So what will be the key goals for Galaria in his first 12 months?

Will the current strategy of white labelling and plenty of online marketing be enough to push Kayak beyond the gushing praise of many in the industry to become a major player?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: kayak sidestep meta search travelsupermarket

Tripadvisor and Kayak may read the same books

What a remarkable coincidence.

Press release from Tripadvisor today, about the Top 10 Literary Destinations around the world.

Post on the Kayak blog today, about the Top 5 Literary Destinations around the world.

Well fancy that...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Who will blink first?

Kayak

or

American Airlines

??

Someone will have to.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Kayak-American spat heading to the courts

Just when people thought the row between Kayak and Amercian Airlines couldn't get any more bitter (last installment: War of Words), it turns out that American Airlines has now filed a lawsuit against Kayak.

Papers were filed in Tarrant County, Texas, on 6 August. [Open PDF]

This suit is to stop Defendants ongoing violations, and recover damanges for prior violations, of the terms of its contract with American to distribute American fares and related information.

It goes on:

Defendant intentionally violated these rules in order to secure lucrative referral or other fees form third parties in connection with sending them bookings on American flights or giving them preferred rights, which caused Amercian to incure substantional, unwarranted costs.

This is going to get very messy indeed.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

New comments from Kayak - it was us who pulled the plug, not them

Our story yesterday about Kayak and it's ongoing row with American Airlines indicated how irritated the meta search engine has become with the carrier and its axing of live feeds.

A statement we received from Kayak admitted that its results were "a little less comprehensive" following AA's decision to cut ties with the meta search engine.

But as it stands today the row is likely to escalate further after Kayak got in touch again last night to effectively add a Molotov Cocktail to an already fiery corporate riot.

A spokeswoman told us:

Kayak.com is disappointed that American Airlines has chosen to misrepresent to loyal users that they terminated their relationship with Kayak.com.

The truth is that Kayak.com terminated the relationship because we refused to concede to AA’s demand to not display AA fares available through online travel agencies alongside those from AA.com.

Kayak.com became aware of AA’s misstatement after our user feedback system started receiving supportive emails from consumers disappointed with AA’s actions, a number of whom forwarded us the inaccurate email AA sent out last night.

We hope that AA will not only agree to again allow consumers to compare AA fares on Kayak.com and SideStep.com, but will refrain from making false statements.

So now it's a matter not only of how fares are represented, but who is telling the truth - apparently.

One suspects that Kayak chief executive Steve Hafner - who is well known for not mixing his words - had a slightly terser series of sentences, but the corp comms people thought better of releasing them into the ether.

NB: See Norm Rose's anaylsis of the Kayak-AA situation.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: kayak american airlines

So many twists in the tale...

Our story on Tuesday said American Airlines could pull the plug on its product feed to Kayak because it doesn't like the way its aa.com search results have to compete with orbitz and cheaptickets results for the same flights

The airline said it could end its relationship with kayak and sister brand sidestep as early as TOMORROW unless concessions were made!

In the meantime, site analytics specialist Compete has come up with some pretty interesting stats on what AA stands to win or lose from such a move.

In June kayak and sidestep sent 1.3% of all visits to aa.com.

These visits converted extremely well with Compete's findings showing that almost 5% of all conversions on aa.com came from kayak or sidestep.

And, visits referred from kayak and sidestep to aa.com converted at 9.3% in June, quite a lot higher than the airline's own website average per visit of 2.7%.

The flip side of the coin is this - Compete also analysed the rate of people clicking over to AA flights on Orbitz revealing that 72% make their way to aa.com anyway at some point over a month.

So, AA will seemingly lose a chunk of business by withdrawing from the meta-searchers but in all likelihood get a good chunk of it back a week or two later!

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Better searchers use metasearches...

Kayak.co.uk is the latest online travel business to try to generate some consumer-facing PR by telling everyone that the Brits will continue to travel despite the tough economic conditions etc, etc...

But there’s a paragraph in the release which might be of interest to Travolution’s readers. When asked about booking,

‘nearly every respondent (96%) said they preferred to research holidays online
instead of visiting a high street travel agent (2%) in order to research new and
exciting destinations and to find the best deals.’

So people who respond to online surveys on a travel web site use travel web sites to buy travel. No surprise there then, other than the fact that one in fifty kayak users still thinks they can get a better deal and advice on the high street!

But there’s more:

Almost half of respondents (46%) typically visit between two and five travel
websites and nearly a third (31%) will visit up to ten. A dogged 20% of
respondents, intent on thoroughly researching holiday destinations and finding
new ways to trim costs, will visit 11 or more travel websites.

This provides a nice contrast with some research put out by Google at the start of the year which said that consumers visit on average 22 travel websites before booking.

It looks as if customers are evolving – those who have cottoned onto kayak are more targeted in their searching than people starting out from Google.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Technical error or lucky find? PhoCusWright here we come!

[UPDATE (x2) at the bottom of the post]

Travolution is off to California in November for the PhoCusWright conference.

So, browsing Kayak - and other sites, hasten to add - for a flight from London to LAX, and we find this little nugget of good fortune:


The search results shows an Air France return flight from LHR to LAX on the required dates. On the Air France website it is £862; on ebookers £384!!

Schurely schome mishtake?

Follow the link through to ebookers and - da-da - the same fare is still there:


We also carried out a search starting from the ebookers engine and same again:


Now for some this would be an incredible coup. And indeed it is. But it seems to be too good to be true.

We asked someone more familiar than us with booking engines, fare loads and the like to get an idea of why the fare is so incredibly cheap.

• Loading error (either automated or human).
• Revenue management system on the blink.
• Some commercial deal where ebookers/Orbitz wants to put a certain volume through just prior to a renegotiation with an airline - so will take anything.
• Some event happening in the UK at the same time (with lots of people coming from states) - hence extra flights have had to be put on - and now demand has to be created in the opposing direction (but that would have impacted all flights).
• Its what they intended.

Or, on a lighter note, our mole suggests, it could be the seat by the toilet.

If anyone has any further suggestions, please add via the comments section.

UPDATE:

According to the ebookers' flight team, this discovery is in fact good fortune and the price is correct on the site. A message reads:

Ebookers should nearly always have cheaper fares than the airline's direct site (with the exception of BA where ebookers match).

Which they would say, of course.

Anyway, it also appears that Expedia has gone all laissez faire with Air France and is also offering the same ticket for £374. Opodo also has it for £378.

It's a wonder the OTAs stay in business! We jest...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: orbitz ebookers kayak phocuswright los angeles california silicon valley

TripAdvisor spending more money - but now involved in search

There appears to be no stopping TripAdvisor's Steve Kaufer and co with their desire to buy as many "travel media" properties as possible.

The Expedia-owned company has bought two further sites, VirtualTourist and OneTime, both for undisclosed fees.

The addition of the pair to the TripAdvisor Media Network will give the user review firm an impressive 32 million unique visitors a month.

Of the two acquisitions, OneTime is probably the most interesting. It is essentially a travel search site which allows users to find deals across a number of OTAs (Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity) and meta search engines (Kayak, SkyScanner).

Previously TripAdvisor and its string of community sites were all primarily concentrated on producing or sharing content, much of it user-generated, but with OneTime it has reasonably discreetly added decent travel search to its armoury.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: tripadvisor virtualtourist onetime travel search meta search

Travel in the BB House

Any Big Brother fans out there?

No, I thought as much but to get over the boredom of another series we thought we could come up with a fantasy travel big brother house.

Where? How about the Aphrodite Hills Resort in Cyprus - we hear there might be a few travel people out there quite soon for some conference thingy.

And, besides the travel industry loves a lock-in.

We need some glamour so let's have Ian McCaig of lastminute and Steve Endacott of the On Holiday Group.

We also need someone for them to have a fight with so that it makes interesting viewing so that means the entire Google travel team!

A US contingent would also add some colour if Kayak's Steve Kafner could make himself available or maybe Bill Gates.

Failing that we could organise a live satellite link-up.

But, what would they talk about all day, who would do the cooking and more importantly who would be evicted first?

Suggestions please and feel free to add to the fantasy BB travel team, some female company could even things out a bit.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Sense of Perspective 2.0

Or not...

Despite the apparent economic slowdown and subsequent belt tightening, some might argue monetary madness reigns supreme.

Here in the UK, agency consortium Advantage Travel Centres is the subject of much speculation about its future following rumours that Australian travel giant Stella is on the brink of a takeover of the business.

The figure banded being talked about in most sensible circles is around £8 million.

Meanwhile, some might say, over in la-la land, micro-blogging service Twitter is apparently worth $95 million (that's £47 million).

This is on the back of Kayak's purchase of Sidestep last December for around $160 million (£90 million at the time) - a move Steve Hafner recently admitted was primarily for the traffic.

So the question: is traffic worth more than structure?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution Summit - panel videos!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The (infamous) CEO interview with Steve Hafner at the Travolution Summit - hello TravelSupermarket

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Caption Competition - sarcasm recommended

Rough Guides is in PR overload as it pushes its new guidebook to England.

Press release blurb:

...in a country where “queuing remains a national pastime” the Rough Guide says there’s one thing that unites the nation: “their sense of humour”.

“The English are devoted to sarcasm on a gigantic scale.”

Well let's see how devoted we are - and readers in other countries, of course - to the lowest form of wit (but the highest form of humour) with a caption to go alongside this picture of Kayak co-founder and CEO, Steve Hafner, at the Travolution Summit a few weeks back.


Entries via the comments button. A prize for the best one...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: rough guide hafner kayak england caption competition

Webby Awards agree with Travo judges

Looks like a clean sweep for Kayak in recent weeks.

The meta search engine has won a coveted Webby Award in the US, just a fortnight after scooping a Travolution Award.

Kayak landed the People's Voice award and flight prediction site Farecast won the main Webby in the travel category.

An American roadtrip series from the New York Times won in the travel category for online video. Discovering Cross-Cultural Solutions Brazil scooped the People's Voice prize.

[Valleywag has a typically cutting piece of analysis regarding the Webbys. NB: no money changes hands at the Travo awards]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: farecast kayak webby

MoneySavingExpert says Kayak as well

Following last week's win for Kayak at the Travolution Awards, MoneySavingExpert consumer guru Martin Lewis used his UK TV show on Five last night to bestow further accolades on the US meta search engine.

The It Pays To Watch programme singled out Kayak as the best travel site for bargain flights et al.

You've got to hand it Lewis and his ability to throw as much traffic back towards his own site.

The story on the It Pays To Watch website sends consumers to the cheap flights advice page on MoneySavingExpert an astonishing seven times, in just a dozen or so paragraphs.

Nice!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: kayak moneysavingexpert five

The Search Gap

Some good insight from Gareth Williams of Skyscanner on what's wrong with search in the travel sector.

What Williams terms as the 'gap' in search appears when you enter something like a flight number and what you get back is nonsense.

It is a problem that needs solving and is something that is holding the industry back.

"Travel desperately needs a solution to getting flight information and a number of other areas . One of the reasons that search gap exists is search technology for travel is really difficult. It lags behind other sectors," said Williams.

He goes on to say that if Google solves the problem there is the incentive of huge margins and it will make for a more efficient experience for consumers.

Over the course of today's Travolution conference we have heard a lot about different sectors of the industry taking each other on - kayak attacking tripadvisor and google - and now it seems Skyscanner is gearing up to also take on Google with its answer to much improved flight information.

Meanwhile, we have Thomson Holidays considering less reliance on the search giant.

It's that recurring theme of what do we do about Google?

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Run, Google, run...

Steve Hafner, CEO and co-founder of kayak.com, talks to Philip Wolf, giving a level of insight into his business which would have the corporate PRs of a listed company looking nervously at their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance notes.

Kayak is on the verge of launching a travel-specific vertical ad network, giving Google a run for its money. Hafner suggested this would happen 'within 45 days'.

Kayak bought Sidestep for $175m, essentially to get the audience. But Sidestep's travelpost.com will become Kayak's user review site, giving tripadvisor a run for its money.

Kayak will get the range of European hotel inventory through agency partners, supplier partners and, interestingly, 'hooking into a GDS', giving the bedbanks a run for their money.

Kayak employs 58 people - 32 in technology, the balance in the commercial teams. Travelocity has 10,000. Hafner says: 'We're all web sites, so that's where we all should be innovating, but they haven't changed theirs much in the past ten years, despite their massive human capital.'

Metasearch will work in Europe because of online penetration levels and supplier fragmentation. While there are more metasearch in Europe than the US, Hafner 'isn't too impressed with their technology'.

Kayak is the suppliers' friend - it can offer better conversions than Google, while its ad network will be cheaper than Google.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Quotoid #9

Steve Hafner, co-founder and CEO of Kayak:

"The morsels that we would find tasty would be technologies, teams or audiences."