Three reasons why Kayak sets the standard

OK, I know firsthand that there are more reasons why Travel is unlike Real Estate then there are similarities. Real Estate is fundamentally local; I do not believe REALTORS® can/will be disintermediated; the purchase cycle happens over months if not years; and so on.

But despite all that, I still look to Kayak.com for inspiration more often than I’d care to admit.

Full disclosure, there are a few extenuating circumstances that influence how much I pay attention to it. First, two of our Board members at Roost sit on the Board of Kayak as well, so we certainly share some DNA. Second, I know one of the founders, Paul English, relatively well and he is never shy about giving advice. Finally, Kayak is my Mother in-law’s favorite travel site…nuff said.

Never-the-less, I’m unabashed in my belief that they set the standard for search in ways that apply to many, many verticals – not the least of which is Real Estate. And I think some of the principles that make them so good at what they do, can, and should inspire us in this space as well.

First, Kayak does one thing and one thing extremely well.

From content…to community…to widgets, the allure of offering all the various types of information & gadgets a consumer could possibly want is incredibly seductive. This is equally true in Travel (if not more so). And yet, Kayak has done an incredibly good job of being disciplined & staying true to its mission of search. When I visit as a consumer, there is no question what I’m going to get. I’m going to get laser focused search and it’s going to be better, easier, and faster than what I’d find anywhere else. I don’t use Kayak to get reviews of places to vacation. Perhaps that’s on there somewhere and I don’t know it. But when I want to search through a lot of airfare or hotels, I’m going to use Kayak and know it will deliver.

Second, they are constantly iterating

Every time I visit Kayak I come across some new candy (in fact that’s what inspired this post). And I’m not talking about extraneous features. I’m talking about candy that improves my experience of doing the core of what I’m there for. In my latest visit I discovered that they had added a mouse over event that makes it easier for me to filter on one flight’s time from within the search result. Very cool – see below. I feel like every time I come back…there’s something new like this that just works.

Third, they are obsessed with customer feedback

One of my first experiences with Kayak involved emailing them a bug. You’d think this would be a bad thing, but amazingly it turned out to be just the opposite. That same night their Chief Architect emailed me back personally to ask a follow up question, and they had the bug fixed the next day. That blew me away on pretty much every level. Can you imagine if you had a customer service issue with a big retail store and a VP level person emailed you that night?

This all adds up…

I was at a online marketing summit where someone asked how many folks in the room had used Kayak, and probably 2/3 of the room put up their hand. Then they asked how many had discovered Kayak via an ad and virtually no one raised their hand. Almost all those folks had heard about it from a friend. That is a powerful dynamic my friend…and no accident.

We try very, very hard at Roost.com to emulate Kayak in order to make it easier for folks to search through accurate & up to date homes for sale. I think we have a long way to go, but let’s hope a little of it is starting to rub off…

alex

Alex Chang
CEO
Roost.com
2008 Inman Innovator Award Finalist