KAYAK is a search engine that’s used for booking travel. Basically, that means that the Kayak.com online travel shopping app searches the Internet for the express purpose of locating airline tickets, hotel bookings, and rental car deals. It’s also about giving travelers the information needed for choosing the options that are right for them. Who owns Kayak? The company is a Booking Holdings, Inc. independent subsidiary and that company is a worldwide leader in online travel services. Kayak’s basic mission is to assist people with experiencing the world and its current CEO, Steve Hefner, was also a co-founder of the company all the way back in 2004.
We’ve broken down a few pros and cons for you regarding the use of this popular travel booking website. Hopefully, they’ll help you a bit with deciding whether using Kayak.com for finding the lowest prices for your trip will be worth it for you or not.
Pros:
- Getting the best deals and fast – Kayak’s goal is to assist you with getting the very lowest prices on your travel bookings. On their site, they highlight the lowest pricing in green, so that you can always know exactly which travel booking website will be the cheapest to book with. And, even when another site is offering a lower price than what Kayak offers, they’ll simply let you know. That way, you can compare the actual prices on all of Kayak’s many partners and competitor sites to save money on every single trip you book.
- Tracking prices over time – Kayak lets you set up price alerts, which means that you can track prices weekly, seeing how much they actually change over time to make smart booking decisions. This means that if you have a little bit of time for planning your trip in advance and you’re interested in a particular flight or hotel, you can keep a close eye on the price trends to ensure that you’re making the best booking decisions.
- Kayak tools for planning your trip – Kayak offers some excellent resources for helping you plan your trip. And, the Kayak trip planner will save your reservations and searches, as well as any other information you gather, keeping it all in one place for you.
- The free Kayak app (for Android, iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, Nokia, and Windows 8), which boasts more than 20 million downloads since it debuted in March 2009, offers built-in advantages.
- Kayak is good for locating the lowest prices on travel services bundles without certain inherent potential dangers or risks.
Cons:
- Kayak.com doesn’t really offer any features that are especially unique compared to any of the other travel booking websites.
- Another downside of using Kayak is the sponsored ads that appear above each search result, however, they’re not too distracting.
- Lacking ingenuity – Kayak’s features aren’t particularly inventive, offering fewer user reviews and not offering any “lowest price guarantee”.
- Safety concerns – There are a few potential risks that are inherent to travel booking websites because you usually have to enter financial and/or personal info. Kayak.com isn’t any more of a safety risk than other travel websites, however, it’s still a good idea to exercise caution when you use it. Entering personal info only when it’s absolutely necessary and being wary of fraudulent emails is highly recommended.
Kayak Customer Support
Kayak doesn’t have a customer email at this time but does offer two phone numbers for customer service assistance with your online travel shopping.Unfortunately, they don’t currently offer live chat, nor do they have a Facebook page or a Twitter handle, however, they do have a help forum.
Kayak Cancellation Policy
For ticket cancellations that you request within 24 hours of your booking, (exclusively for tickets in the US market), KAYAK doesn’t charge a processing fee. Since Kayak isn’t a seller but a search engine, they don’t actually have any refund policy. Refunds would be handled by whatever provider booked the trip and/or accommodations. In the event that you’re not quite sure what company you should talk to, you can check your credit card statement or go to Bookings on Kayak.com for locating that information.
Kayak- Can You Book a Cruise, Hotel, Flight, and Rental Car?
Kayak helps find the best travel times and prices for the following travel purchases:
Kayak Ease of Use
If you happen to be searching for a simple user-friendly online travel shopping site, then Kayak is for you. And, although you don’t have to create an account for booking with Kayak.com (or any of Kayak’s partner websites for that matter), you can save a lot of time if you do because you’re able to save all of your credit card info to your Kayak account, making future travel bookings much easier. To sign up for your account and learn exactly how to use it for booking travel, you just need to go to Kayak.com and start your search for the best prices on travel bookings.
Do They Offer Monthly Payment Plans for Your Vacation?
Currently, Kayak.com does not offer any monthly payment plans for your next vacation, although it’s true that some other sites like Expedia and Priceline do.
Overall, Kayak.com is an excellent option for researching travel industry prices. It’s not only easy to use and quite fast but it can also pull valuable info from a wide range of sources. You shouldn’t have any problems when you research and book basic airline tickets with Kayak and the other travel purchases, like travel services bundles, hotel bookings, and rental cars, are quite easy to research and book as well on their user-friendly travel booking website.