Kayak Buys Sidestep In £90 Million Deal

Kayak is to buy travel rival Sidestep in a deal reportedly worth £90 million.

The revolutionary deal, which is the first of its kind between two of the leading travel search engines, is to be funded by an initial $27 million raised by Kayak and followed by an additional $197 million , for which, $180 million is to be used in the cash deal with Sidestep. Kayak’s European interests are currently run by Annie Wilson.

Kayak, which was started by the founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia, searches hundreds of travel sites from all over the world to find cheap flights, has an approximate $2.5 billion worth of sales per annum. Rivals, Sidestep who can search over 200 airline websites like British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Ryanair, EasyJet and Iberia, is understood to have sales of $1 billion.

Both Kayak and Sidestep already have a number of links-up deals with UK companies including AOL (Kayak) and Orange (Sidestep).