Who Founded Kayak
Kayak was co-founded by Paul Bennett, Steve Hafner, and Michael Gross in 2004 as a travel metasearch engine that aggregates fares from airlines, hotels, and rental car agencies according to Forbes. The founders built the company to let travelers compare prices across multiple booking sites in a single search, positioning Kayak as a neutral aggregator rather than a direct seller of tickets or rooms.
Before Kayak, Paul Bennett co-founded SideStep, a travel search startup acquired by Kayak in 2007, while Steve Hafner had a background in technology and online services per Crunchbase company profile. Michael Gross focused on product and operations as the company scaled its platform, and together the trio structured Kayak to process large volumes of structured travel data and present it in a simple, comparable format.
Kayak Business Model and Growth
How Kayak Makes Money
Kayak earns revenue primarily through referral fees and advertising when users click on hotel, flight, or rental car listings and complete a booking on a partner site as explained by Investopedia. The company does not hold inventory or set prices; instead, it directs qualified traffic to airlines, online travel agencies, and hotel chains and charges performance-based compensation.
Search Technology and Data Sources
Kayak crawls and indexes fares from airlines, global distribution systems, online travel agencies, and metasearch partners, then uses algorithms to rank and display options based on price, duration, stops, and user preferences per Kayak SEC filings. The platform also offers price forecasts, deal alerts, and flexible date searches to help travelers identify the lowest-cost options.
Kayak Today and Corporate Structure
Ownership and Public Listing
Kayak is a publicly traded company under the ticker symbol KYAK and operates as a subsidiary of Booking Holdings, the parent company of Booking.com, Priceline, and Agoda per BusinessWire announcement. Booking Holdings acquired Kayak in 2013 for approximately $1.8 billion, integrating the metasearch engine into its broader online travel portfolio.
Current Operations and Traffic
Kayak continues to operate as a standalone travel search brand, serving millions of users monthly across web and mobile apps in dozens of countries based on SimilarWeb traffic estimates. The platform supports searches for flights, hotels, rental cars, and vacation packages, and it remains one of the most visited travel comparison sites globally.