News that Kayak's top man outside of the US, Faisal Galaria, quit suddenly a few weeks ago following an apparent disagreement with the top brass at the company is, inevitably, triggering all manner of speculation.
[Faisal Galaria, second left, in happier times at Kayak during the Travolution Summit 2009]The facts are these: Galaria joined in August 2008 with a remit to grow Kayak in Europe and launch into Asian markets.
Eight months later and he's gone, the company says, "to pursue other interests", though we now know (with a direct quote from Galaria himself) that his departure was a result of a difference of opinion over the direction of the company, one might presume, about its plans overseas.
There have been shorter tenures in business, of course, but the general perception amongst most industry watchers was that a company such as Kayak was hiring a heavyweight like Galaria (someone with decent experience in growing international businesses - like Skype) to do exactly that same kind of role.
So it is a bit of mystery as to why Galaria left so quickly.
Let's look at what Kayak is trying to do in Europe.
Kayak launched in 2006 amid rather gushing praise for its technology and user experience, but in terms of traffic and brand recognition it has remained behind the likes of Travelsupermarket and Skyscanner in the pureplay meta search sector, and Cheapflights and Teletext Holidays in the often confusingly parallel price comparison site arena.
A question to ponder is how was Kayak expecting to reach the heady heights in which, for example, Travelsupermarket has found itself in recent years (a top ten trafficked site, according to Hitwise)?
The reason to ask is because Kayak is in a very different position in the UK and Europe than it is in the US, where it has - especially with its 2007 acquisition, Sidestep - recognition and, most importantly, first-mover advantage.
One can speculate that perhaps Kayak is hoping for the same strategy will work in Europe as it did in the US in the mid-2000s when it's, let's be honest, far superior user experience to traditional travel agency sites captured the public imagination.
Since then, however, European OTAs have improved their web user experience and search capability and the existing and early riser meta search engines have consolidated their position.
This is not to say that Kayak's proposition is not as good as some of the OTAs - it clearly is far better, in many cases - but to grow the business against well-established and stiff competition perhaps requires a different strategy.
And this, we presume once again, is perhaps how the conflict between Galaria and his masters back in the US surfaced.
Up until very recently, some argued that a branding campaign for Kayak would have at least helped push it some way into the minds of consumers.
Take one extreme: it would be hard for almost all but a few travel companies to justify the sums of money Travelsupermarket spent on its TV campaigns of recent years, but it certainly now has a brand of which many consumers are now familiar.
There are obviously other, more subtle, branding efforts. But there have been none, apart from the omnipresent keyword buying programmes favoured by everyone else.
So perhaps this is the inherent problem new meta search engines in Europe (and the US) now face - creating volume (frankly, the ultimate way to build a meta engine commercially).
Presume for a moment that the status quo remained (little to no branding activity, quick and dirty launches in new markets, some white labels here and there), perhaps Kayak would have eventually seen some of the growth it required outside of the US.
But perhaps this all changed when TripAdvisor announced its decision to enter the meta search arena with flight search (expected in the UK in Q3) and Travelzoo launched fly.com, also due for a UK launch later this year.
With the addition of these two players into the market, backed perhaps by either branding campaigns of their own (in fly.com's case) or existing voluminous traffic (sans TripAdvisor), there could be perhaps even more pressure on Kayak and others to rethink their strategy.
Meta search is a complicated beast as far as growth is concerned. And the market in the UK has just got even more complex.
And maybe this is why Galaria felt at odds with the direction of his colleagues in the US...
In France it is even worst with websites such as www.sprice.com and www.liligo.com
Hi Kevin,
Very astute article. As you rightly note, Kayak's primary obstacle in Europe is on the traffic side.
We've done a good job making Kayak.com better than the competition (although it's not yet as comprehensive or fast as we'd like) and commercialization is where we expected it to be. But growing audience is a different challenge. Skyscanner has done a better job than us on the search engine optimization side - but at the expense of usability (who enjoys endless pagination to find a fare that might be available?). Meanwhile, Travelsupermarket has invested far greater sums than us in outright marketing to support a website that isn't as good as Kayak either (but which probably monetizes better).
Ultimately, we need to get better at SEO and also invest more aggressively in SEM and offline.
Stay tuned :)
How will Kayak improve SEO with such limited original content? I thought the beauty of Kayak was its simplicity and would hate to have it muddied or cluttered at the expense of SEO.
Long term, if the product is superior and provides demonstrable value, traffic will grow. I think this is where Kayak sits relative to its competition.
But personally I'd stay away from too much offline (with the exception of PR) and keep beefing up SEM.
@ Pete
I’m no expert, just a lunatic blogger ;)
You do not have to clutter up the search process with content, keep it simple, but work on adding unique content. I.e. airport and airline guides that are a useful resource for consumers, and blogger’s and the media etc. would link to because they improve the booking/research process.
One thing that is lacking online is information about how to get from ZYX airport to the city /destination, what bus services, public transport etc. Links to the local public transport websites. You won’t believe how much time I spend searching for this information on various websites after I have made the flight booking.
When I do a search on Kayak, I search and then disappear so you need to keep me there by offering me content that helps me plan and book my holiday/weekend break.
Hi Kevin
I mirror Steve's "astute article" comment.
I think more generally, that trying to deal with Europe as a single market, is always going to cause problems, for any company – and something that we have learnt early on. It’s far more than just a translation problem. We will face the same (and even more complex) challenges we enter the “Asian” market fully.
We are all eagerly awaiting to see how Steve and his new guy are going to spend their vast ($100m?) new marketing budget. We had hoped for something a teensy bit more creative than bidding on a variation of one of our trademarks, which we saw on Monday morning – but I am sure there is far more to come.
Best wishes from a surprisingly sunny Edinburgh.
Sunny Barry..it must be a very strange day:)
I have to say we too have had our issues when launching in different countries. We took the original www.carrentals.co.uk model and launched it in numerous companies about 3 years ago and found things did not quite work as we had expected.
Having a large budgets like Kayak in many ways can also be a hinderance...what do you reckon Barry since your cash injection last year? The days of doing it how you wanted must have gone:)
Doug
Interesting piece...
As was touched on above you have two choices with this kind of model. One is to keep things simple and pass off consumers as quickly as possible to 3rd parties. The other is to try and keep them, engage them and warm them up so when they are passed on they convert at a higher level.
The second approach was the one we adopted on www.teletextholidays.co.uk when i was there and had some great results. It's very important though to remember that the "warming up" costs money and takes time to develop (ggrrr frustrating)
Tough call for kayak now, so much potential though if the brand can kick on here
i guess ultimately the aim is to get into consumers’ minds and stand for something uniquely. easier said than done.
but is seo the answer? i dont think so. google, twitter, facebook and kayak US, didn't rely on seo to get into consumers’ minds.
they all by passed generic keyword search because of their innovation, uniqueness and ability to capture press coverage and word of mouth. in my view anyway.
i think kayak has the ingredients (short, memorable and non-generic name) & an innovative emphasis on usability, ability to generate press coverage and wom.
To some extent (especially compared to usa) the kayak brand is lacking uniqueness in directions given the cluttered of categories in the uk/euro market. i.e. its is not differentiated enough to get cut through and press in uk and europe.
so i'd say, rather than focusing on the lowest common denominator (seo) keep working the formula and refining the direction until its differentiated enough to get cut through, press and word of mouth.
I believe that generic named and seo reliant sites won’t cut it over longer term unless they really do occupy a spot in people minds.
Kevin
great article
at the Phocuswright Berlin Bloggers Summit in March, I presented why comparehotelsdirect.com will , when it launches in the UK and Europe later this year, move the metasearch for hotels on from the kayak model by eliminating all OTAs from the serach result and refer the user uniquely to the hotel website for reservations.
Peter Fitzgerald
London
now that is a development Peter. It will be interesting to see the rate policy of the hotels direct and then whether OTA's will repeat the traditional travel agents moans about being undercut. Will vary from chan to chain i guess but they will mostly want the direct business in the way the airlines have done.
Again the success will boil down to conversion levels and the cost of the lead. In addition the quality of hotel websites will come under scrutiny more, across the board at the moment they are generally poor!
Interesting piece.
@Sherlock
I think you're spot on there re seo, it's too difficult that way to grow big enough to become dominant, especially since the competition is increasing every day.
So either you go hardcore niche and occupy that space or go wider, since examples like goog, twit and fb provide are very different and wider service than that of mere travel comparison.
From a supplier's point of view, my opinion on the pending wider success of some players depend on if they are long-term enough, if the business model is flexible and if their approach is at least semi-global.
/Jesper
Matt
good points. we will only feature Best rate guarantee hotels and we have fourteen thousand hotels signed up. we have a 100 pct acceptance level so far from hotel groups we have approached.