Interview: Kayak CEO on Downplaying TV Ads and Direct Bookings
Skift Take
Kayak started the direct-booking trend among travel metasearch sites, but now CEO Steve Hafner says improvements have been made on partner sites so direct booking is no longer a priority and can hurt, rather than help, turning lookers into bookers. Have the conditions really changed or is this Priceline Group-speak?
Editor’s Note: Skift is publishing a series of interviews with online travel CEOs talking about the Future of Travel Booking, and the evolving habits and device preferences of travel consumers. Check out all the interviews as they come out here.
When you think about the current state of travel booking in the U.S., it doesn't take brain surgery to figure out that TV advertising and its brand-building powers are definitely an integral part of the equation for the largest companies.
But when talking to Steve Hafner, co-founder and CEO of Kayak, you learn about the inefficiencies of TV advertising and how it may be losing some of its punch given the preference of the younger generation -- be they the much-wooed millennials, teens or pre-teens -- for streaming programming on their own myriad devices.
Kayak, a travel metasearch site, isn't abandoning TV, but it is looking to de-emphasize it a bit in favor of mobile and online advertising, which shouldn't come as a huge surprise for a company that was acquired by the Priceline Group in 2013.
If that is somewhat contrarian, when you listen to Hafner discuss direct bookings within Kayak apps and on its websites and how the company, which pioneered such bookings within the metasearch context, is now downplaying this option, you want to scratch your head because Hafner's saying things that are the opposite of what he might have said just two or three years ago.
Contrary to what just about everyone else in the travel industry is saying, Hafner says Kayak is now seeing increased booking conversions when it transfers users to airline or hotel sites instead of keeping them on Kayak, and he swears this changed outlook has to do with improvement by third-party sites and has little to do with the fact that Kayak is now part of the Priceline Group with its portfolio of booking sites.
As is his habit, Hafner can be fairly candid. Asked whether TripAdvisor's launch of personalized hotel recommendations this week is a harbinger of things to come across the travel industry, Hafner says it is -- but just not in the manual way TripAdvisor is doing it.
Skift spoke with Hafner about what he sees as the future of travel search and travel booking, and what life is like within the Priceline Group.
And edited version of the interview follows:
Skift: With so much TV advertising by the big online travel agencies and Kayak taking place over the last few years, is TV advertising becoming an integral part of
