Despite its late entry to the Australian online travel marketplace, newcomer Kayak is confident there is still room to “grow the pie” by shifting offline sales online as it confirmed it is in talks with some of Australia's major retail chains.
The US-based metasearch site launched in Australia in September last year, following the UK’s Skyscanner and Germany’s Trivago into the local market beside Australian metasearch site Hotelscombined.com.
The aggregator's main focus is on flights with more than 500 airlines featured, but it also offers over 500,000 hotels, car rental locations in over 36,000 cities and around 2.6 million holiday packages.
The Australian launch represents part of a wider regional push, vice president Asia Pacific Debby Soo told Travel Today. However, she highlighted Australia as the “biggest focus” for the company within the region due to its strong potential for growth.
“Traffic here converts really well,” she said. “When people come to our site they’re ready to book.”
However, Soo admitted that the local push is not without its challenges.
“We look at this market and we know people travel and that people are booking online,” she said. “But offline travel is such a big part of the distribution landscape.”
The prevalence of major retail chains such as Flight Centre and now Helloworld makes it tougher for online newcomers to compete, as does the abundance of existing online and metasearch players.
Nonetheless Soo insisted that Kayak is ready to take on the the mammoth task at hand.
“Competition is very fierce here which we love because that makes everyone strive to be more innovative,” she said.
“And there’s room to grow the pie for online, so we’re trying to shift users from offline to online. Kayak will ride that wave as well as the other OTAs and metasearch companies out there.”
Ensuring it features all the relevant local companies is a vital part of the strategy, with Kayak leveraging its already considerable local brand awareness and scale in other markets to seal a number of partnership deals.
The technology that powers the site is also a major advantage, according to Soo. She claimed it is “the strongest in all of online travel”, particularly its mobile app.
“We know that mobile penetration is huge here in Australia and our mobile app is the best in travel,” she said.
In addition to its offer of comprehensive search results, a flight tracker and an itinerary management product, the app enables customers to book a hotel or flight in just two clicks without ever having to visit another site.
“Mobile is huge, it’s the backbone of our company – a huge driver of growth”, Soo said.
In addition, the fact that major retail chains are increasingly looking to online to bolster their in-store sales also creates opportunities.
"We want to see online travel grow as a percentage of total travel in Australia so we're more than happy to work with partners trying to shift their business from offline to online, especially if those partners have sites with great user interface, compelling prices or content that we're not getting from other sources, or if it's a brand that people trust or know," she said.
"If a brand meets those requirements then generally we’re more than happy to work with them."
She confirmed that Kayak is in talks with some of the major retail chains, although she declined to disclose which ones.
