Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/08/priceline-com-acquiring-travel-company-kayak-for-1-8b-in-cash-and-stocks/?utm_source=Twitter&awesm=tnw.to_isx7&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus

by goatcurious • 14 years ago

244 125 14 years ago

thenextweb.com

personlurking• 14 years ago

Anyone have any idea if Kayak will be integrated into Priceline or if it will remain its own company?

colinsidoti3• 14 years ago

It's own company: http://www.tnooz.com/2012/11/08/news/priceline-buys-kayak-fo...

daakus• 14 years ago

I hope this doesn't kill the current best UX that hides the junk in this industry.

duck• 14 years ago

There is always http://hipmunk.com, which I think has the best UX of any of them (although maybe it is lacking some features, but none I would use anyhow).

Edit: Doh, fixed the link!

JoshTriplett• 14 years ago

That's hipmunk.com, not hipmonk; however, it looks like they own that typo domain and redirect it.

bradleyjg• 14 years ago

I agree their UI is somewhat nicer, but they don't have all the features. In particular they don't have one way.

photorized18• 14 years ago

Hipmunk looks interesting, haven't seen it before. Minimalist is the way to go, I think. Can't stand busy travel sites that try to be everything to everyone.

dmbass• 14 years ago

I've found Google Flights[1] to be a much better experience than either. It is stupid fast and has a great interface for comparing prices if dates are flexible.

[1] http://www.google.com/flights/

ssharp2• 14 years ago

Hipmunk's visualization is a great way to show the flight times.

I also love the tabs they use to open different searches. I live equal distance to three airports and can quickly compare prices at each.

bgarbiak• 14 years ago

I'd recommend www.skyscanner.net, at least for the European users. Sure, they lack simplistic interfaces of Hipmunk or Kayak but when it comes to actually finding the cheapest tickets and best connections on the old contintent low fare airlines market they're, IMHO, the most reliable.

taumeson• 14 years ago

Fun fact: Both are located in Norwalk, CT., about a 5-10 minute ride from each other. Priceline is located almost on the Darien border and Kayak is nestled in South Norwalk (SoNo). I gotta believe this proximity lead to board member and executive coziness.

makmanalp2• 14 years ago

Fun fact #2: Founders are co-founders of travelocity, expedia and orbitz. It's a tightly knit yet competitive biz :)

hluska• 14 years ago

I can't escape the feeling that that fun fact is why stories like these have hit the wires:

http://zlkdocs.com/KYAK-Info-Request-Form-463

To save you from reading that document, a law firm has decided to 'investigate' whether Kayak's board "breached their fiduciary duties to stockholders by failing to adequately shop the Company before entering into this transaction and whether priceline.com Incorporated is underpaying for Kayak shares, thus unlawfully harming Kayak stockholders."

Another firm has announced it is conducting another investigation (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/block-leviton-llp-investigates...). Not sure if it relates to whether or not Kayak adequately shopped around the company....

jarek• 14 years ago

Breach of fiduciary duty lawsuits are very common for all major acquisitions. For the law firm it's high potential reward with relatively little downside. The mere fact of one or two being filed means pretty much nothing.

dude_abides• 14 years ago

Just 4 months after IPOing and right after reporting record earnings! It looks like they perfectly timed it right at their peak.

riviera• 14 years ago

Sad day today. I hope they don't touch it!

donretag• 14 years ago

You mean by having Captain Kirk do commercials for them?

antoko• 14 years ago

Kayak is great (was?) but Hipmunk is more than up to the task of filling the void if Priceline ruin Kayak.

Congrats to the Kayak folks I guess, when they got into the industry they really raised the bar.

Before Kayak I remember having to use Expedia and Orbitz and just having to accept their crappy UI because there simply were no alternatives.

jobu• 14 years ago

Hopefully Priceline will learn some improvements from Kayak and not try to force changes the other direction. Kayak has a great UI overall, but the explore interface is pure awesome: http://www.kayak.com/explore/

photorized18• 14 years ago

Visually that kind of interface is very appealing, but fares may be misleading... once you start the booking process, you will end up with completely different numbers. Typically, a featured "as low as $" air fare is a red eye, 8 hour connection time etc. I was going to output specials myself too, but then commented them out - as they hardly ever apply.

That being said, Kayak does have a great UI, and their iOS apps are eye candy.

bduerst• 14 years ago

Hipmunk has a much better interface, and considering it's also an aggregator, much better at helping me quickly find flights or hotels.

philfreo• 14 years ago

disagree. kayak provides filters in exactly the way that makes sense to me. i've tried hipmunk and google and always come back to kayak.

bmelton• 14 years ago

I was getting ready to say almost the exact same thing -- thank heavens that Hipmunk came when it did, or that acquisition (if soured) would have left a very large hole in my travel-making tools.

I don't particularly like Kayak, but as a matter of effectiveness, there's no doubt that it was pretty much king of the hill for a good long while. Since Hipmunk's inception though, it has definitely been the 'go-to' place for travel-planning, and beats the nearest competition (that I've used) by a mile.

I would also venture to say that this was perhaps a timely exit for Kayak, as the more and more traction Hipmunk sees, the less off the Kayak founders would have been for an exit.

thezilch2• 14 years ago

http://www.google.com/flights/?hl=en&gl=us#search;f=LAX;...

versus

http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/LAX-to-SFO#!dates=Nov09,Nov16...

I respect what Hipmunk is trying to do, but I really doubt they are filling voids outside of "this" community. I find it much harder to scan, slower to load, and having lower quality tools for finding alternate (or cheaper) fares.

TillE2• 14 years ago

I tried the Google tool...

"Sorry, flights from Germany are not currently supported."

"Sorry, flights from Italy are not currently supported."

"Sorry, flights from United Kingdom are not currently supported."

Wonderful. I can find flights from New York to London, but not vice versa.

kylec• 14 years ago

There's also:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/CheapFlights?geo=1&travelers=...

More Kayak-like in terms of the results list. Cheapest rates match Hipmunk, though curiously for different flights.

TillE2• 14 years ago

I see Hipmunk still doesn't track budget airlines in Europe (eg, EasyJet).

Which makes it fairly useless to me, and absolutely not a replacement for Kayak.

brianbreslin3• 14 years ago

Do any flight search tools track budget airlines?

spez2• 14 years ago

Hipmunk does have EasyJet, in fact.

For example: http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/BCN-to-CDG#!dates=Dec31

smattiso• 14 years ago

Relative volatility of KYAK was 3x the normal amount during the day. The news was released after hours. Long live insider trading!

makmanalp2• 14 years ago

Or, it could be that they were releasing their Q3 financials today.

3327• 14 years ago

agree 100% its an epidemic.

nazgulnarsil4• 14 years ago

Insider trading sends important price signals to the market. The alternative is LESS information.

oh_sigh2• 14 years ago

That's completely idiotic, and I hope you feel ashamed of what you wrote.

The problem isn't more or less information, it's that insider trading creates two classes of people: Those select few "in the know" who can reap massive profits by getting an illegal phone call, and the suckers.

photorized18• 14 years ago

I don't like any of the existing travel sites, so even had to write one for friends and family (we like pick a random place and just go):

http://www.somewherenice.net/

This was put together over several weekends, so don't be too harsh on me. :)

andrewcross• 14 years ago

Go for all the feedback you can get, harsh or not ;)

photorized18• 14 years ago

OK thank you :)

photorized18• 14 years ago

My current goal is to minimize, and have 5 words and 2 graphics on the home page, nothing else. TLDR etc. don't know how yet.

jngreenlee• 14 years ago

I like it, I've been looking for something like this. Some features (dreaded feature creep!) I'd love:

1. Map interface with little lines from my home base airport to the possible destinations - It's just fun to see. 2. Sliders to increase/decrease budget - Dynamically adding/removing routes as I change the $$ limit.

Maybe these would only take another weekend to add? </joke>

calbear816• 14 years ago

kayak.com/explore solves this problem for ya.

photorized18• 14 years ago

jngreenlee: I was actually thinking about the map yesterday, but couldn't think about a good way to visualize so it doesn't look like another google maps mashup with pins. Your idea with air routes is interesting, hope you don't mind if I just go ahead and borrow them? :)

photorized18• 14 years ago

I am hesitant about including budgets, mainly because they can be so misleading, and it's hard to actually get that price once you start booking. I had included "staring from $xxx RT", but then commented it out just prior to launch.

But you just gave me another idea.

zalew4• 14 years ago

I'm working on a travel (many)weekend(s) project myself yet to launch, so I won't be too harsh, but... :P I put Warsaw in, and the suggested airports were Okecie (correct) and Babice (it's in Krakow), Modlin was missing. And all the result were in the USA. I like the design theme with all the backgrounds etc. and the logo, cool idea. You should leave some way to contact you with feedback on the page. Keep on, good luck.

photorized18• 14 years ago

zalew: airports - the UI lets you add your own. But I will look into Warsaw... I am currently looking at airports within a 50 mile circle, is Modlin farther than that?

About the results: if there's no snow, a ski resort will most likely not be shown to you.

The destinations were hand-picked, e.g. 2012 Best All-terrain, or best night life, or... But the list is growing, we just started to add European locations.

photorized18• 14 years ago

zalew: try again, I added it.

Apparently that airport just opened in July 2012, and formerly was a disused military airfield? That's why I didn't have it. Thanks again.

zalew4• 14 years ago

sorry, when I've read Babice, I thought Balice (Krakow), it's late. Babice is of course indeed in Warsaw, even nearby me, but it's for small aircrafts and stuff, not passenger airplanes.

muratmutlu4• 14 years ago

This is great, what's your traffic like? Where did you get your data from?

photorized18• 14 years ago

Thank you, I just "launched" the site a couple of days ago, so nobody knows about it except my FB friends. Airport data is open-source, although it needed some cleaning (to filter out things like railroad stations etc), weather forecasts are from Wunderground, but the main asset is Destinations. They've been hand-picked (a la Mechanical Turk), although the list is growing. Mainly focusing on ski destinations now, so the starting data set is places that I find interesting for whatever reason. I am experimenting with a couple of other data feeds, trying to gauge their relevance. The list of recommendations you are shown is not random, more interesting places (with better conditions at the time) bubble up.

Traditional travel sites are airport-centric. Say you want to Ski in Alta UT. Most would try to send you to SLC (Salt Lake City), show you weather for Salt Lake City, then try to up-sell you on a hotel in Salt Lake City (or maybe Sandy UT).

Mine's is destination centric. Where you fly to, where you check the weather, where you ski, and where you book your hotel (or even buy lift tickets from) - are not necessarily the same "place". Does this clarify things somewhat?

P.S. Just checked real-time Google Analytics, you guys (HN are awesome, stress testing the site :). Do you think I should do a "show HN" at some point?

smackfu• 14 years ago

From the Kayak IPO S-1:

In particular, for the nine months ended September 30, 2010, Expedia and its affiliates, including its Hotels.com and Hotwire subsidiaries, accounted for 25% of our total revenues. Also during this period, Orbitz and its affiliates, including its CheapTickets and ebookers subsidiaries, accounted for 19% of our total revenues.

I guess Priceline wants to get a first shot at all that business, and then to get paid by their competitors for bookings they don't get.

photorized18• 14 years ago

I am curious what their contracts with all these parties looked like... Booking providers seem to like exclusivity.

Btw, anyone from Travelocity here? Would love to share some feedback about your platform.

arbuge• 14 years ago

Related: Expedia has an API... http://developer.ean.com/. Haven't checked it in a while - looks like only hotels are available now (no flights, cars, cruises, etc.)

Of course, not saying that Kayak went through this route - this is just something available to the hoi polloi.

colinsidoti3• 14 years ago

In recent times, Kayak has been shifting to push customers directly to airlines and hotels, instead of pushing them through online travel agencies like Priceline.

I suspect this is Priceline admitting that it (and other OTAs) are losing relevance in preference for the meta-search model.

Smart move, and I don't think they're dumb enough to ruin it. Read up on how successful Priceline was with their Booking.com acquisition.

colinsidoti3• 14 years ago

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if we see another OTA scoop up Hipmunk soon while it's (relatively) cheap.

dbecker• 14 years ago

I'm not remotely worried about priceline ruining kayak.

Kayak was the best interface before hipmunk, and it may (or may not be) the best interface now.

But there will be more improvements in travel buying interfaces... whether those improvements come from kayak or someone else, Kayak's current interface will seem kludgy in a couple years.

d23• 14 years ago

The title looks like it reads $1.88. I thought they had pulled some legal gimmick to screw them over.

yawgmoth• 14 years ago

Since everyone seems to be putting in their 0.02$ on which sites they use for booking, bing.com/travel is also very good. The buy-wait prediction is fantastic.

johnbenwoo• 14 years ago

That was from their acquisition of Farecast, which was a great product - glad it's still surviving post-MSFT acquisition

calbear816• 14 years ago

It's good to see people still using Farecast! Most of the original team is now working on other startups including Decide.com, Medify.com, and Room77.com.

_casperc• 14 years ago

This may not be the place or time to ask this but here goes anyway:

How do the travel indexing sites like Kayak get their data? Surely they don't index or consume APIs from the travel companies individually?

tonystubblebine• 14 years ago

A company called ITA, now owned by Google. http://www.fastcompany.com/1666092/google-acquires-airline-d...

baltcode• 14 years ago

And where does ITA get it's data. I assume there must be a few competing standards, and the airlines use one of them to give their data to ITA. Why can't other companies get the data directly from the airlines?

casca2• 14 years ago

Kayak and Hipmunk get a lot of praise for their UI but if you want to use a hacker interface for finding flights, http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ is the way to go.

It's not as pretty, but is incredibly feature-rich, not limited to the US and regularly finds me prices that are significantly cheaper than anyone else.

scotth• 14 years ago

Have you tried out Google Flights? I've been told it's based on this same technology, and has a much better UI.

And be sure to click around. It has some interesting tools, like prices for flights to your destination flown out of nearby airports.

patrickod• 14 years ago

I believe that ITA software is owned by Google. They license it to others as well.

brianbreslin3• 14 years ago

wow google flights is super fast!

baby• 14 years ago

not working in Europe. God damn!

mherdeg• 14 years ago

It was a sad, sad day when they shut down the old http://matrix1.itasoftware.com/ interface. It was much more keyboard accessible with faster navigation between inputs, and the forward and back buttons always did exactly what I expected. Also really miss the "weekend search". It was a really great service, but I guess it wasn't exactly making them money.

koeselitz• 14 years ago

Kayak, Hipmunk, Google Flights, Orbitz, and almost every other aggregator licenses ITA Software's system, actually. And most major airlines use it internally. It's good enough that it's pretty much the de facto standard and framework.

ciniglio• 14 years ago

Maybe not Google anymore, since Google acquired ITA :-). But obviously they still use it

spez2• 14 years ago

FYI - you can access most of ITA's routing language on Hipmunk, if you type :: after an airport code. The advantage of using us is we can make you a booking link to actually purchase the itinerary.

casca2• 14 years ago

Thanks, that's interesting. The issue for me is that Hipmunk only serves the US market and won't let me enter multiple airports as source or destination. My best results have started with a list of 20 possible sources and destinations which is unfeasible to search with any other publicly available service.

bhaile• 14 years ago

Nice. I wasn't aware that Hipmunk supported that. I just tried it and it even provides some helpful hints. sfo::ua+ atl::ua+

Good stuff. Saves me the time from matrix.itasoftware.com to go to the airline or booking site.

What about limiting it to fare basis? for example: sfo::/f bc=y atl::/f bc=y doesn't work. There another way?

Love what you guys do and will have to check on working there at some point.

edouard12345674• 14 years ago

That's really bad news for Expedia. When you book a hotel room directly on Kayak, over 90% of the bookings go through expedia and hotels is where these travel agencies make most of their money. (Not airfares, they have become a commodity, thanks to Kayak :) )

gordonbowman• 14 years ago

I think this is a great acquisition by Priceline. They are going for market share here to get ahead of Expedia et al.

A big part of their growing business is in Europe via Booking.com, so with Kayak they beef up their market share here in the U.S. in a big way.

FaceKicker3• 14 years ago

Pretty tangential, but why is it that none of the flight search engines include Southwest? I realize that Southwest doesn't give their fare info to whoever the other airlines give it to, but what's stopping someone from just scraping southwest.com every hour or so for the current fares? Or even if scraping is against their TOS, couldn't they hire one data entry employee to manually go through and add Southwest's flights every day? Or is it somehow illegal to publish Southwest's prices?

I imagine it would be a big competitive advantage for whichever one did it first - it's pretty annoying how every time I want to search for flights I have to first search on Kayak/Hipmunk/GoogleFlightSearch and then separately go to southwest.com and wade through their slow, awful search interface.

muratmutlu4• 14 years ago

I booked a Southwest flight last week using Kayak. Try it for yourself, here's a screengrab from just now

http://cl.ly/image/3j0Z2m1Y2N44

FaceKicker3• 14 years ago

Interesting, I've never noticed Southwest results in my Kayak searches before (maybe it's new). But when I try it, it doesn't actually give the price as in your screenshot, it just has a link labeled "Info" (which goes to the southwest.com homepage) where the price would normally be. I wonder if it has something to do with you being in the UK?

calbear816• 14 years ago

Southwest does not believe in distributing their fares through the metasearch or OTA channel. They want to own the customer and make sure there's only one destination to book Southwest fares and that is Southwest.com and it's worked out pretty well for them.

The hard part for scraping is that it's both against their TOS and you wouldn't be able to have accurate availability and price information through manual data entry. The nature of how frequent price changes and the number of possible combinations of fare types/routes/availability is what gave rise to companies like ITA.

FaceKicker3• 14 years ago

> The hard part for scraping is that it's both against their TOS and you wouldn't be able to have accurate availability and price information through manual data entry. The nature of how frequent price changes and the number of possible combinations of fare types/routes/availability is what gave rise to companies like ITA.

Anecdotally, whenever I've checked Southwest prices multiple days in a row they usually stay the same. So I'd imagine it would still be a valuable enough resource if there were someone who did this manually at the granularity of a day, even if when you clicked through to buy the tickets they occasionally wouldn't match the price the search engine told you. You could even have a "report this price as incorrect" button.

fouadz• 14 years ago

Anyone can explain me where they get all the deal ?

antonpug• 14 years ago

Great. Now Kayak will become a hell of a lot more "biased". Priceline does not give nearly as good of results as Kayak.

Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

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