Kayak.com, the world’s largest travel search engine, created by co-founders of Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, today expands with the beta launch of its German site de.Kayak.com. The site launches with the industry’s most powerful flight search including the Kayak Buzz tool which displays the lowest fares to the 25 most popular destinations from any airport or city as found by other Kayak users. The hotel search and car hire will be available later this year.

Kayak is a meta-search engine that provides real-time prices and availability from more than 404 travel sites, including leading European carriers British Airways, Air France and KLM; low cost carriers easyJet, Ryanair and Air Berlin; and online travel agencies such as ebookers and wegolo. Users can compare prices for one way, round trip or multi-city flights. Kayak is the only travel search site that offers flexible search, which is the ability to search up to three days before and / or after a preferred travel date for the best fare and itinerary combinations.

Kayak exploded onto the North American market in 2005, winning accolade after accolade and emerging as a top 15 travel site in less than two years. Since launching in the UK, Kayak has quickly become one of the most popular travel search sites, winning three Best of the Web awards since its beta launch in December 2006.

“The European travel market is heavily fragmented among suppliers, wholesalers, and agencies and as a result, German travelers struggle to gather information,” said Steve Hafner, Kayak co-founder and CEO. “Kayak searches all these sites and presents travel options in an-easy-to-use, unbiased display. Our signature sorting and filtering tools enable users to quickly narrow in on the perfect itinerary. We’re confident the German market will take to Kayak, and we reflect this in our goal of becoming a top 10 website in the country within a year of launching.”

The superior interface, the innovative functionality and the focus on personalization offer a true Travel 2.0 experience. Leading industry experts have called Kayak the “posterchild” of Travel 2.0 for the following reasons:

1. Kayak’s AJAX technology provides more itinerary options than any other travel site. The simple design and industry-leading sorting and filtering tools make finding the best price fast and easy.
2. Kayak.com is the only travel site focused on customizing the site for each individual consumer. Kayak remembers a user’s preferences and search history and will display results accordingly. Kayakers benefit from more relevant search results, providing a more efficient and productive search experience.
3. Kayak’s mash-up with Google Maps provides the user with more detailed information than found on other sites. The Kayak Buzz Tool for example contains a map that helps to quickly view affordable flights from a home airport.

Kayak is also the first website to bring airfare history technology to Germany. Thanks to three industry leading features that provide consumers with the airfare pricing history on flight searches, Kayak helps users make an informed purchasing decision:

1. The award-winning Kayak Buzz displays the lowest fares to the 25 most popular destinations from any airport or city as found by other Kayak users. Results are displayed on an interactive Google Map. Consumers can get the Buzz from a home airport by region: World, US, Europe, Caribbean, South America, Asia, Africa and Australia/Oceania.
2. Best Fare History displays the 100 best prices found by other Kayak users searching the same route over the past 36 hours.
3. Best Fare Trend Graph charts pricing for city/date pairs found by users over the past 90 days.Users wishing to wait for a price reduction can register a Fare Alert which tracks a point-to-point itinerary or a Buzz Alert which tracks prices to a region. Kayak will email the traveler when the fare meets or beats the desired price. Alerts can be managed from the Buzz tab or from the user’s profile.

de.Kayak features dates, distances and currencies, which have been customized for the needs of German travellers. Search results go directly to the German versions of the sites searched for users to purchase directly tickets in euros. Kayak is not an online travel agency and does not bias search results or tack on a service fee for purchases.

In order to optimize search tools and flight search speed, de.Kayak.com has established a partnership with Amadeus, a global leader in technology and distribution solutions for the travel and tourism industry. As in the UK, de.Kayak.com will be using Amadeus’ Meta Pricer solution - a low-fare search engine that searches the content of airline partners. The solution minimizes the search costs for airlines and returns quality results for the Kayak user.  

Travel companies or media owners interested in partnership opportunities with Kayak’s European sites, can contact Annie Wilson, Director of European Business Development, +44 (0) 7930 357 617 or annie@kayak.co.uk.