Mike has the news on Kayak merging with Sidestep and raising tons of dough. I’ll be looking at Kango over the weekend, which recently relaunched.
Travel Heats Up Again
Mike has the news on Kayak merging with Sidestep and raising tons of dough. I'll be looking at Kango over the weekend, which recently relaunched….
been in kango’s closed beta, it’s nice and evolving. not sure what you mean by “relaunched”, i think they have been working in stealth for past year or so.
also, seem likes a very different space then sidestep/kayak. kango helps you pick where to go and what to do. not sure they do any price comparison.
maybe you meant it more in a way to see if sites like kango benefit from this acquisition. look forward to your coverage.
recently i got an invitation to kango’s private beta, and I was impressed by how they let me search based on the kind of trip I want. They had stuff I that made them seem more like google for travel to me then like a ordinary travel site. I am interested to hear what you think of the kayak/sidestep deal
John,
There is a connection between Kayak and Kango because we both do meta-search in our own fashion. Kayak searches many booking sources to help you find the lowest prices. Kango searches many review and information (e.g. descriptions, photos) sources directly to help you find the right hotel or activity (and soon, the right destination). Then you go to Kayak to price compare or Expedia, Hilton, Southwest etc. to book. At Kango, we don’t do the real-time meta-searches for price and availability that Kayak does. And Kayak doesn’t structure unstructured content (e.g. reviews, blogs) and extract meta-tags like we do. Oh, and they are a $500M company…and we’re not!
Separately, I wrote a post at blog.kango.com about the merger and a coincidental move from a larger competitor that might shake things up.
Yen