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Kayak's Blog Suddenly Looking Less Than Transparent

August 8, 2008 at 10:54 AM | 3 Comments

Just days ago, we were praising Kayak for being transparent about its role in an ongoing saga with American Airlines about whether or not the fare search aggregator should be allowed to show the airline's pricing info. But one thing we didn't hear about on the official Kayak blog this week? A lawsuit AA filed against the company on August 5.

In the court papers, American alleges that Kayak:

Displayed American fare content obtained from Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com. [Kayak] would display American fare content ... above the AA.com listings. This siphoning of American fare content from other websites undermined American's efforts to reduce its distribution costs and violated the plain terms of [an agreement between the two companies].

The ultimate decision to pull American's fare content was made by Kayak on June 30, when the search company terminated the agreement it had with AA about displaying the carrier's inventory.

A spokeswoman for Kayak had no comment on the case itself, but she did point us to some interesting statistics about the interplay of AA.com and Kayak (and its sister site SideStep).

According to Compete, an online market research firm, and data from Quantcast, an internet traffic measurement service, AA.com drew roughly 3.4 million people in June, which means Kayak directly referred about 44,000 people to the site, 2,200 of whom booked a ticket. At $450 per fare, that'd add up to $1 million in revenue for the month thanks to Kayak.

Interestingly, only 2.7 percent of visitors who go straight to AA.com end up buying something. Those who have a chance to comparison shop on Kayak before heading to AA.com buy much more frequently: 9.3 percent of the time in June. In other words, American could be cutting off a decent chunk of its e-business by pulling its fares from Kayak.

That said, the airline claims in its suit that Kayak is still violating the terms of the breached agreement by continuing to display AA fare info via links to Orbitz found on the travel search engine. American also claims that previous statements made by Kayak online about the dust-up violated a confidentiality agreement the companies had. Maybe that's why we can't get a comment out of Kayak's spokeswoman?

Wanna know more? Here's a PDF of American's allegations.

Related Stories:
· American Airline Sues Parent of Kayak.com and Sidestep.com [Aviaton Biz Blog]
· AA.com Traffic Information [Quantcast]
· AA.com's usage of Kayak [Compete]
· Booking Engine Fiascos: Kayak Owning the AA Saga Narrative [Jaunted]

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Author Photo: pbb by pbb

3 Comments

Return to » Kayak's Blog Suddenly Looking Less Than Transparent

  1. egw

    Jaunted Editor
    August 8, 2008 at 10:59 AM




    What this series needs

    is a catchy name -- Capsizing Kayak?

  1. beatofhawaii com

    Jaunted Member
    August 8, 2008 at 12:03 PM




    The real issue

    I have not seen the statistics from Compete, nor know their relevancy.  I for one would not buy going via Kayak or Sidestep to AA, while I might use Kayak them to look at fares (though they aren't my preferred sides).

    The situation may well more pertain to the relationship model between the airlines and the online travel agencies.  I believe we haven't seen the end to this issue.  American is just testing the waters.

    We wrote on this last month:  http://beatofhawaii.com/online-travel-agencies-in-trouble/

    Aloha, Jeff

  1. pbb

    Jaunted Editor
    August 8, 2008 at 12:55 PM




    The stats

    We linked to the stats from both Compete and Quantcast in our post. As to the relevancy of those stats, it all comes down to cash.

    American says the alleged misuse of fare data costs it money--but having that info on Kayak probably made the carrier more than $1 million in June. Is AA really paying out more than that to Orbitz in fees every month?

Return to » Kayak's Blog Suddenly Looking Less Than Transparent

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