Amazon’s Kindle Fire is one of the most popular Android-powered tablets, but it doesn’t feature a GPS chip. Given how important location-based services have become, that’s a bit of a drawback for many developers and quite a few apps that want to access location features on Amazon’s tablet actually crash. To avoid these issues, Kayak teamed up with Skyhook to provide location services for its updated Android app. Kayak, of course, relies heavily on location services to show its users information like nearby hotels and airport information. → Read More
Travel search giant Kayak just posted new revenue numbers for the fourth quarter and full year 2011 in a new S-1 filing with the SEC. As we heard last September, Kayak put its IPO plans on hold until market conditions improve. Now that the markets are more stabilized, it should be interesting to see when Kayak makes the push to become a public company. For the year Kayak generated $224.5 million of revenues, up 32 percent from 2010.
Net income for the year was $9.7 million, up 21 percent from 2010′s net income of $8 million For the fourth quarter, Kayak saw a 27 percent increase in quarterly revenue, posting $53.9 million in Q4 2011 sales. In contrast, revenue grew 28 percent in the third quarter. → Read More
After debuting direct booking for hotel reservations, travel search engine Kayak is expanding this option to airline flights. This feature is initially only available for Air Canada but Kayak will be adding more airlines in the future.
Previously if you wanted to book a flight using Kayak’s search engine, you would click-through to the airline or partner site to book the reservation. Kayak would receive an affiliate fee from the transaction but the actual booking would be made outside of the search engine.
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Kayak is boosting its hotel search today with the integration of hotel reviews from TripAdvisor into search results. Via an agreement with the reviews giant, Kayak will be integrating all all TripAdvisor reviews into the Kayak Hotel Search. Simply put, when you search for a hotel on Kayak, all of the over 60 million TripAdvisor reviews will be included in the KAYAK search results.
In October, Kayak launched a hotel Recommendations filter that allowed users to narrow results by expert recommendations, and pulled in reviews from Frommer’s and Budget Travel. Users will also be able to filter search results by TripAdvisor as well, ticking off a box will filter out any non-TA reviewed properties. → Read More
After redesigning its iPad app and consolidating the app with its iPhone cousin, travel search company Kayak is updating the UI for its web search portal today. The aim with the redesign is to create a more universal and comprehensive consumer experience across all Kayak platforms: web, mobile web and apps.
One of the biggest changes users will see is that there is considerable more white space on the search results page. Kayak is also using bold fonts less often. As co-founder and CTO, Paul English explains to us, the company studies what users are clicking on and realized that putting less information on the page would provide a better user experience for consumers. → Read More
Travel search engine Kayak has is announcing a new board member today—HomeAway Founder and CEO Brian Sharples. He joins fellow Kayak board members Michael Moritz, Joel Cutler, Terrell Jones, Hendrik Nelis, and Gregory Stanger
Sharples co-founded vacation rentals giant HomeAway in February 2005 and helped lead the company to a public offering in June 2011. Prior to HomeAway, he was president and chief executive officer of marketing and data research company IntelliQuest Information Group, helped complete two public offerings and the sale of Intelliquest.
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Kayak is announcing a major update to its iPad app today. The travel search giant has made its iPhone and iPad apps universal, adding a bunch of new features to the tablet version of the app.
The free app has gotten a huge UI makeover, with redesigned flight and hotel search, including an easier to use calendar. The app has been totally redesigned in terms of layout. Kayak has also added car rental search, the ability to integrate Kayak’s trip planning features, and a new autofill assistant helps you complete your purchase on airline and hotel web sites. → Read More
As AllThingsD reported in September, travel search engine Kayak has put its IPO on hold until market conditions improve. Kayak filed its S-1 for a public offering nearly a year ago. Today, the company just filed a new S-1 with its revenue numbers from the third quarter ended September 30, 2011.
During the most recent quarter, Kayak posted $61.16 million in revenue, up 28 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company also increased revenue slightly from the second quarter 2011, which came in at $56.7 million.
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Most power airfare searchers know that buying two one-way tickets on separate airlines can sometimes be cheaper than buying a roundtrip ticket on the same airline. But on most travel search portals you have to do a little digging to find these one way fares, and sites like Kayak wouldn’t pair two one-way fares from different airlines. Today, Kayak is integrating these fares, which the company has dubbed ‘Hacker Fares’ into flight search.
So if you are looking weekend roundtrip flight from New York to San Francisco, and the best price is $600 for an economy ticket on Airline A, you’ll also see the price options for two one-way fares on Airline A and Airline B, which may be cheaper. Kayak calls these Hacker Fares because searching and matching separate airline and travel sites for these cheaper one-way fares requires a bit of hacking. → Read More
Bubble or not, 2011 may go down as the year of the tech IPO. Not since the last bubble have we seen so many technology companies clamoring to go public. And halfway through the year, we still have many more companies who will be listing on either the NASDAQ or the NYSE in the next six months. Here’s a roundup of the tech companies that have gone public, where they are trading now, and who we can expect to see ringing the bell next.
Professional social network LinkedIn probably had the biggest IPO in terms of hype this year because it was one of the first big social media companies to go public. After pricing its IPO at $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn began trading at $83.00 per share on May 19, giving the company a $7.8 billion market cap. In the first day of trading, shares popped up to as high as $122.70, soaring past a $10 billion valuation. → Read More
Late last year, travel search engine Kayak filed for an IPO, aiming to raise $50 million. The company just released a new version of its S-1 today, with updated financials. The company will list its stock on the NASDAQ under the symbol “KYAK.”
For the three months ending March 31 of this year, Kayak generated $53 million in revenue, which is up 43 percent from the same period in 2010. Net income for the quarter came in at $8.2 million representing 266 percent growth from the same period last year. → Read More
Launching today at the Demo Conference in Palm Springs is flyRuby, a platform that enables you to search, compare, and book private air charters online. There is something to be said for startups that identify successful services and business models and apply those to under-served niche markets. Through its website, flyRuby hopes to deliver a quick and efficient way to book private air charter that is comparable to the instantaneous search, booking, and competitive pricing of commercial airline sites, like Orbitz, Kayak and Expedia.
The project of founder and CEO Michael Leek, flyRuby owes its technology to CTO Dr. Stephen Smith, who, working in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University, developed the algorithms as part of a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) research initiative to assist the U.S. Air Force. Operating in a similar manner to the technology behind commercial airline booking sites, flyRuby’s artificial intelligence instantly scans thousands of flight routes and seating charts for private flights across the country, finding available seating, and streamlining the booking process. → Read More
GroundLink — a New York City transportation technology and travel services business — released a new mobile app this week. The second iPhone app from the company, GroundLink allows users to book a hybrid, electric or otherwise clean-vehicle car, shuttle or limo to get around cities around the world.
Users can also opt to book a ride by lowest price, highest service rating or soonest and nearest available driver with the app. The company’s chief executive Alex Mashinsky noted:
“Over 5,000 of our [transportation] providers offer green vehicles – all forms, including hydrogen fleets in Los Angeles, even. It’s not all hybrids and electrics. Some countries have promoted natural gas vehicles…” → Read More
Travel search engine Kayak just filed an S-1 statement with the SEC for a proposed initial public offering. The company hopes to raise $50 million, according to the filing.
Here are some interesting stats included in the filing. For the nine months ended September 30, 2010, Kayak generated $128 million in revenues, growing by 48% from last year. For the third quarter ended September 30, Kayak generated $48 million in revenue, representing a growth of 80% from last year. Net Income was actually down for the first three quarters to $6.2 million from $10.4 million in 2009. → Read More
German travel search engine Swoodoo has been acquired by the leading U.S. flight search engine Kayak.
Although Kayak has lots of cash in the bank and is a major player in the US, it is still not well known in Europe, hence its need to make an incursion here. Financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed but we hear on the grapevine that T-Venture and Deutsche Telekom were “very happy with the Exit”.
Swoodoo was founded in 2006 in Germany and since then has established its position as the self-proclaimed “market leader in online flight search in Germany” in a competitive market. → Read More
German travel search engine Swoodoo has been acquired by the leading U.S. flight search engine Kayak.
Although Kayak has lots of cash in the bank and is a major player in the US, it is still not well known in Europe, hence its need to make an incursion here. Financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.
Swoodoo was founded in 2006 in Germany and since then has established its position as the self-proclaimed “market leader in online flight search in Germany” in a competitive market. → Read More
In preparation for the launch of the iPad tomorrow, iPad Apps are live in iTunes and we’re sorting through the best ones as fast as we can. But with more than 2,000 iPad apps in the App Store, the choices are already daunting.
To help you find the best apps at launch, we’ve put together the definitive list below. It includes all the iPad apps reviewed on TechCrunch, as well as other promising ones we have not gotten to yet. If you have a favorite you think should go on this list, tell us why in comments.
Here is our list, which we will keep updating through the launch of the iPad: → Read More
Discount travel site Kayak has launched a new version of its popular, free iPhone app. The new app, which is already in App Store, includes a trips management tool, an upgraded user interface and faster search.
New features and upgrades include a two-dimensional desktop-style navigation system, an enhanced flight, hotel and car search design including a new scrolling calendar, faster search and additional search options and filters. It basically comes one step closer to bringing the web experience of searching Kayak to the iPhone. The app also serves as an itinerary management service that consolidates flight, hotel, car rental, maps and other events into a single itinerary. Kayak’s paid app ($3.99) for flights on business or first class has also been updated with the trip management feature and improved search and UI. → Read More
DealBase.com, an online database devoted to aggregating hotel deals and packages, has secured $1 million in Series A funding from angel investors including Russ Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Bob Zipp, managing director of Amicus Capital; and Josh Hannah, general partner at Matrix Partners and former CEO of eHow.com.
Launched in November 2008, DealBase crawls the web to create a database of hotel deals, special offers and packages, which currently number more than 22,000 deals, from over 3,500 sources, adding up to $4,660,093 in total savings on the site. The online travel industry is a competitive market chock full of sites that find consumer deals for travel, which makes the popularity contest incredibly tough. Expedia, Kayak, Travelzoo and others all offer packages and deals through their platforms and have a dedicated user base. → Read More
Event tickets are a big business and startup FanSnap is entering the game with a compelling ticket search engine. FanSnap is launching the public beta of its nifty Kayak-like live ticket search engine for sports, concerts, and theater events. FanSnap, through partnerships, provides free ticket search results for close to 60 of the leading ticket providers, including StubHub, eBay, Ace Tickets, AllShows.com, Barry’s Tickets,Gold Coast Tickets, Las Vegas Tickets, RazorGator and TicketNetwork. The results include more than 12 million tickets to 40,000 events.
FanSnap’s technology makes finding tickets to an event very simple. The site allows fans to see ticket selection and price ranges at-a-glance. FanSnap uses sliders to allow users to filter tickets by price range, date, time, number of tickets available, and by the series of the event (baseball homestand, a multi-night concert performance, or a week of Broadway shows). Users get a comprehensive list of comparable ticket offers from multiple providers. The search results also make it easy for users to see the full price of a ticket on a ticket vendor’s site, including all taxes, commissions, and fees that may come with a ticket. Similar to Kayak, when a user clicks on a desired ticket, he or she is taken to the vendor’s page. → Read More
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