What You Will Find at Kayak.com
One thing you will not find
at Kayak is a slick look. It’s a functional search engine
that emphasizes usability in place of bells, whistles, and
self-promotions. The screens for inputting information are
all very much the same, but there is also a tab for travel
news that connects to a world map and trip ideas, and another
tab that takes the user to a forums section.
In the forums section you
can ask questions about your travel plans and get advice,
or contribute answers and advice yourself. Here you can check
in with other consumers about good car rental deals, and read
about warnings on certain companies renting cars, etc. Because
you can also browse the forums by region, you can find specific
information about car rentals in the areas you wish to travel.
Kayak.com has won many awards
for the website from top-notch publications like Forbes.com,
Time Magazine, and BusinessWeek. One of the crowning glories
of the site is that it is objective. They are not trying to
sell you travel bookings because they can’t. Kayak searches
over 120 other sites to get you the best deals, and presents
them so that you can make a comparison right on your screen.
It beats searching the other providers individually, writing
down the results or printing out everything, and making comparisons
from all that information.
Kayak only redirects customers
to other websites when they have decided what they want. For
instance, if you run a comparison of car rentals and found
the one you want, you will not go there until you give Kayak
permission to send you there by clicking on a link. There
you book your reservations and make financial arrangements
with the company directly. Because you may get results for
travel businesses you have never heard of, it pays to either
check the forums or a consumer review website. Find out all
you can about the car rental agency before you okay a transaction.
You may also want to have a travel book handy, like Fodor’s.
Kayak.com also offers price
history graphs and trend graphs by clicking a “details” button.
That way consumers can track the best price trends for their
particular destinations or preferences. And, like some of
the other travel sites, Kayak offers “total pricing”—no nasty
surprises. |
