Kayak Bows Out of Opening Lifestyle Hotels Under Its Own Brand
Kayak exited the small business of opening lodges and branding them as Kayak hotels, Skift has acquired.
Kayak co-founder and CEO Steve Hafner confirmed the news, including that the firm laid off around 10 staff members in relationship with the shift.
“We designed the conclusion to the conclude of 2022 to aim on lodge tech as a substitute of creating a chain of K-branded qualities,” Hafner mentioned. “As a end result, we however parted ways with a little group of folks concentrated on that effort. We even now have engineers on the tech aspect.”
The information hasn’t been reported until finally now.
Hafner reported Kayak intends to continue to keep acquiring hotel tech.
Kayak entered the resort enterprise in 2021, and the very first home it opened in partnership with lodge management company Life Residence was the Kayak Miami Beach.
When their leases expire, Lifetime Property, which operated 3 accommodations for Kayak, will fall “Kayak” from the hotels’ names. The lease for the Kayak Miami Beach front, for example, will expire in April 2024.
The other two hotels under the Kayak-Life Residence partnership were being the Kayak Sol Playa del Carmen and Kayak Luna Playa del Carmen. Their leases are considered to expire afterwards than the Miami Beach front house.
Rami Zeidan, the founder and CEO of Daily life Property, explained the firm would perform with the lodge proprietors to decide branding submit-Kayak, but may return to their names prior to the Kayak offer or something similar.
“We’ve uncovered a large amount from the Kayak-branded hotels and the partnership is ongoing,” Zeidan reported. “We are continuing to function these lodges and to establish good application with Kayak dependent on people learnings, which was always the intention.”
The thought powering Kayak’s entry into the lodge business enterprise — further than giving resort listings, ads, and value comparisons on Kayak brands this sort of as Kayak, Cheapflights, Momondo, and HotelsCombined — was to use Kayak’s brand recognition and user base to assist attract friends, and to just take learnings from furnishing operations tech to build a broader tech business enterprise for accommodations.
Hafner reported Kayak still needs to establish that lodge tech business. Sister firm Scheduling.com, the two component of Scheduling Holdings, experimented with a little something approximately very similar many years in the past, but shut down the item, BookingSuite, in 2020.
Although on line journey company interactions with inns appear to be far better right now than they have been traditionally, a Kayak hotel tech enterprise might still have to offer with the challenge of lodges not wanting to cede command of operations, enable alone information, to an online travel firm.
Kayak appeared to be fully commited to the resort organization in its early stages. It co-led a $60 million funding spherical for Lifestyle Property in 2021.
In 2018, Skift speculated that Expedia or Priceline Might Just Be the Future Fantastic Hotel Model, as quite a few items in the travel field seemed to be converging, including accommodations and shorter-expression rentals, for instance.
With Kayak’s exit from featuring inns beneath its own brand name, that prediction isn’t taking place for the minute, but even now could a person working day.
This reporter hardly ever stayed in just one of the a few Kayak-branded motels, but put in an afternoon hanging out several months in the past in the lobby of the Kayak Miami Beach front. It had a vibrant, youthful social scene.
Even now, parent organization Reserving Holdings and Kayak seemingly felt that the investment wasn’t value it, and as Hafner explained, it would not be pursuing the notion of making a community of accommodations below its have brand name.
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