Booking travel can be challenging, so having a travel search engine or booking app like Kayak can make the process easier.
Kayak is a booking and price comparison travel app that helps find affordable travel deals, accommodation, flights and rental car prices.
In this Kayak travel app review, we will look at its features, pros and cons, and if it is a great tool to book your next trip.
Key Takeaways
- Kayak is a free all-in-one travel app and search engine that helps find the best travel deals for flights, hotels, and car rentals.
- Kayak scans third-party travel websites, pulls information from them to provide price comparisons and booking options, and collates the information in one place.
- While Kayak does not guarantee the lowest prices, it remains a powerful tool for comparing prices and booking flights due to its many features.
What is Kayak?
It is an all-in-one travel app and search engine that helps you find the best travel deals for flights, hotels, accommodations and car rentals.
Through the app, you can:
- Access mobile-only deals
- Search numerous travel sites with a single tap
- View your trip details offline
- Save searches and get alerts
- Search affordable travel deals
- Track prices
- Organize your itinerary and more
Founded in 2004, Kayak is owned by Booking Holdings (formerly Priceline), which operates several other brands, namely, Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Rentalcars.com, Opentable, Rocketmiles, FareHarbor, HotelsCombined, CheapFlights and Momondo.
How Does Kayak Work?
Kayak scans many third-party travel and brand websites and provides price comparisons. When you put in a query, Kayak pulls prices instantly from other travel websites to find numerous options.
Kayak then collates all the information in one place, allowing easy access to the choices and helping you make the ideal decision.
Kayak collects information from online travel agencies, discount suppliers, other travel search engines, and official websites of hotels, airlines, and rental cars.
Kayak then shows you a list of booking options and prices that match your query. These would typically come from multiple providers and booking platforms.
When you go through the search results and see an option that suits you, tap on the listing to view more booking details. Tapping “View Deal” will take you to the booking website.
Tapping on the drop-down menu will show various booking and pricing choices for your chosen itinerary.
Kayak Top Features
Easy Search and Deal Comparison
Use the
With this feature, you can find flexible flight offers with no change fees and perform a search with flexible dates of up to +/- 3 days to determine the best time to travel.
You can also filter flight options according to Stops, Times, Airlines, Airports, Bags, Duration, Price, Cabin, Quality, Sites, and Aircraft.
Flights
Accommodations
For accommodations, you can view search results according to Recommended, Cheapest, Closest, Deals, Review Score, and Star Rating.
Car Rentals
When sorting through search results for car rentals, you can view them by Recommended, Price and Distance.
Hacker Fares
Some airlines provide cheap flights one way but offer expensive return flights. You can avoid this with Kayak’s Hacker Fares.
This feature helps you find one-way flight combos in your search results. Instead of booking one round-trip ticket from one airline, Kayak finds two compatible one-way tickets that combine to make a round-trip flight.
Find the Hacker Fare note under the price displayed on search results. Select the “View Deal” button to check the details and availability.
With Hacker Fares, you can take advantage of the lowest prices available by using different airlines for your departure and return flights.
Price Alerts
A price alert is a handy tool to monitor the price of a specific flight, hotel, or rental car.
Setting a price alert is also a great option if you are not ready to book or if you want to set up alerts for your preferred destinations and days to travel.
To set up an alert, sign in to your Kayak account on the app, use the navigation menu and go to “Price Alerts.” The feature is available for creating alerts for flights and hotels.
Once the alerts are set up, Kayak will send mobile app push notifications to inform you when prices go up or down to help you find the best deal.
Colour-coded Price Calendar
This feature may help you find better travel deals if your travel plans are flexible. This calendar highlights dates when travel may be cheaper and shows expected flight prices for the month.
When you click on a date, the colour-coded chart will display estimated prices for particular dates.
Explore
This feature helps you discover new destinations. Adventurous travellers and those unsure about where to go can benefit from this feature.
When you use it to search from a location to anywhere, Kayak will help you narrow down your options by displaying a map with prices and other filters like budget and preferred travel rates.
Entering an origin airport and providing details through the filters will show various international destinations and estimated airfare costs, giving you options to visit new places with a set budget.
Trips
Trips is a trip planning tool to help you organize your trip in one travel app. It has a Flight Tracker that updates you about a flight and provides real-time status details.
This feature, offered free, lets you perform numerous tasks, including:
- Organizing your travel with ease
- Saving search results to track prices
- Creating itineraries for upcoming trips
- Syncing your travel plans with your Gmail account to create itineraries
- Forward booking confirmations from different sites to add to your trip
- Receive notifications about trips and gate changes
Is Kayak Free?
The
When you have chosen a deal, Kayak will redirect you to the site of your preferred provider. The deal provider pays Kayak for redirecting customers to their site or for helping travellers book with them.
This arrangement enables Kayak to offer its service to customers for free.
Advantages of Kayak
- User-friendly interface
- Simple and easy-to-use travel comparison app
- Helps you get the lowest prices on travel accommodations
- Lets you search multiple destinations at one time
- Flights from several airlines are viewable in one place
- Price alerts notify you when fares change
- Provides price trends between cities you want to travel between
- Various search filters, such as by price, airline, airport, cabin, quality, sites, and aircraft
Downsides of Kayak
- No refund policy since Kayak is a search engine and not a seller
- Has no capacity to sell or process tickets or reservations
- Limited flight bookings on Kayak
- Price fluctuations can cause differences in prices on Kayak and provider websites
- No loyalty program
- No lowest price guarantee
Kayak Customer Service
You can contact Kayak customer service through their Feedback form. You can also chat with a virtual assistant using their chatbox, which you can find on the lower part of their FAQ page.
The company does not have 24-hour customer support but provides a support page with an FAQ section, which Kayak recommends checking before contacting customer service.
Is Kayak Legit?
Kayak is a legit aggregator that searches and scans hundreds of other travel sites at once to provide the best deals on airline flights, accommodations, vacation packages and car rentals.
It helps you find travel deals that suit your budget and itinerary and make it easy to see prices across platforms and brands.
Because it is an aggregator rather than a booking site, you have better access to a wider range of pricing for a flight, accommodation or rental than you would on direct booking sites.
Alternative Travel Booking Apps
While Kayak offers numerous features for finding the best travel deals, it is not the only travel search engine or booking app in use today.
Below are general overviews of some of the alternatives to the Kayak travel booking app.
Kayak vs Hopper
In terms of flight filters, Kayak wins hands down as it has a more comprehensive set of filters that include aircraft type, cabin, quality, and duration. In comparison, Hopper has a limited set of filters.
Both offer a colour-coded calendar or chart that indicates the cheapest travel days and features that provide in-depth information for flight options, baggage fees, and more.
While Hopper provides a desktop website you can use to search for hotels, you often use the app to search for deals. Kayak, on the other hand, lets you find the best travel deals using the app or website.
Kayak vs Google Flights
Google Flights helps you find cheap flights and book them from over 300 airline and online travel agency partners. You can book a round-trip, one-way, or multi-city tickets.
It only collects data from major airlines to find flight prices, whereas Kayak searches hundreds of travel sites and online travel agencies to generate comprehensive results.
As with Kayak, Google Flights features a calendar that helps find the best fare, but it goes further by providing a price graph that lets you tailor your search based on the number of days of your stay.
A major edge that Google Flights has is the price guarantee, but it is only available on flights leaving from the US.
Both offer an Explore feature that lets you discover new destinations and find the most affordable flights.
Kayak vs Expedia
Kayak and
So that travel planning is more convenient, Expedia had a beta launch of its in-app feature powered by ChatGPT, which provides personalized insights on travel-related queries.
Like Expedia, Kayak features ChatGPT as a virtual travel assistant, which provides personalized recommendations based on search criteria and Kayak’s historical data.
Expedia members get rewards when they use the app when booking their trips and extra savings when bundling flights and hotels. Kayak also offers a rewards program called Kayak Explorer, which is only available in the US.
Both apps help users through their travel guides and find attractive deals on flights, hotels, rental cars, and vacation packages.
Kayak vs Skyscanner
Kayak and Skyscanner are travel search engines that provide trip options for the best deals on flights, hotels and rental cars.
Skyscanner has a website and a mobile application that enables you to use your computer or mobile phone to find travel deals.
Both generate flight options using your search criteria and redirect you to provider websites that match your query.
Kayak has an Explore feature for travellers with no particular destination in mind. Skyscanner has a similar one called Search Everywhere.
Is Kayak the Best Travel Site?
But because it is an aggregator, it only relies on the information provided by numerous travel-related businesses.
Additionally, there is no guarantee you will get the lowest prices, especially since it does not offer a price guarantee feature that other aggregators, such as Google Flights, offer.
Still, the company remains a solid option to research prices and is one of the most used platforms for finding information crucial in making the right choices on flights, hotels, and rental cars.
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