Articles tagged “kayak”

Kayak apparently got cute in trying to use the phrase "Hotel for tonight" in its apps and it appears as though HotelTonight prevailed in a trademark flap. Now they've partnered up as HotelTonight is selling through Kayak in a bid to trim costs.

Priceline's and Expedia's respective selling and marketing spend on a global scale shows why Priceline remains on top despite all of Expedia's acquisitions. Priceline does it much more efficiently, getting a lot more bang for a buck.

There will be multiple winners in flight metasearch and Skyscanner, a relatively smaller player in the scheme of things, has the tech acumen and potential to be one of them. However, the company realizes it will need a merger/acquisition or an IPO to get headed toward where it ultimately wants to go.

With Skyscanner's new funding and ample cash, the company sees itself as an acquirer over the next few months. Skyscanner believes a few modest acquisitions, increased marketing, and continued organic growth should do the trick. There won't be any quick, easy answers as this looks like a strategy for the long haul.

In airports and hotel lobbies, how many times have you heard throngs of travelers lamenting: "This app on my phone is wonderful, but if only it had access to real, human travel agents within it?" A new wave of travel startups is conjuring this image. Is it reality-based or wishful thinking? We'll see.

Paul English of Lola Travel wants to address some of the shortcomings, including the lack of human intervention in trip-planning, that were never addressed during his tenure at digital-only Kayak. Perhaps Kayak's new text-based travel service will fill some gaps -- if they really exist, that is -- as well.

The idea of integrating service-fee loving travel agents into traveler apps is at least 15 years old, if not older. Still, assuming it solves a real problem for do-it-yourself travel bookers or a hefty segment of them, there is lots of room for improvement and innovation.

Every smart travel agency and consortium has plans to better integrate one-on-one service with mobile technology. But maybe English, with his established tech savvy, can finally crack the perfect formula for bringing agents into the digital age. The hard part will be acquiring customers, especially when using a mobile app as the sole method of client interaction.

It's a bold idea and the software might turn out to be beautiful (bold and beautiful) but do leisure and business travelers at scale REALLY want to abandon self-booking tools in favor of human travel agent interaction on a mobile app? We are going to find out.

The biggest things that Lola have going for it are co-founders Paul English and Bill O'Donnell and their track record in travel tech and mobile. Apart from that, Lola faces headwinds in really going against the grain of instant bookings and digital-only travel. It's a very ambitious project with huge challenges.