Travel search engine Kayak has lunched a new function on its UK website enabling customers to search for hotels. It is expected that holidays and car hire search will be added towards the end of 2007. This move from Kayak aligns them closer to their fierce US competitor Sidestep who launched in the UK in September 2006. Other competitors include Travel Supermarket, Kelkoo and directline-holidays.co.uk.
It has been predicted that Kayak will struggle in the UK market having not added holiday and car hire search capabilities straight away. However, Kayak already has hotels including Marriott, Fairmont, Starwood, Wyndham and InterContinental signed up for the UK hotel search launch.
Steve Hafner, Chief Executive and Co-founder of Kayak said: “At Kayak, we understand the importance of choosing the right hotel, and believe consumers are entitled to see all the estimated 300,000 hotels worldwide, not just the 15% that are marketed through traditional online agency sites.”
Kayak is a travel search engine finding travel products from travel suppliers all over the world. The Kayak website searches hundreds of other websites in real time for the best travel deals available. Kayak allows users to look at a full range of airlines, hotels and car rental agencies based on chosen criteria.
