It’s worth sticking with this clip from CBS This Morning if you can get past the presenters drooling over Priceline’s $1.8bn acquisition of Kayak in November.
There are the inevitable questions about what Priceline saw in Kayak to pay that much and why the founders decided to sell – good timing, good value, good for investors, liking Priceline as a company and being able to continue to run the company ‘independently’.
Then comes a gem, almost two minutes in – a confession from Kayak’s Paul English on how he misjudged the mobile market when the company first entered the space.
What he thought would just be same-day hotel and flights searches has actually transpired to be a big traffic driver for Kayak with consumers ‘using mobile as their computer’ and booking travel a month and two months in advance.
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About Linda Fox
Thanks for posting this Linda. It further illustrates how critical mobile is for the hospitality industry. I would venture to say that developing a mobile site and/or apps would be placed much higher in priority and be allocated as much resources as needed even ahead of redeveloping a website. The mobile market is only going to increase while we cannot say the same about browser based traffic.
Just to be a bit picky – technically they are not yet a member of the PCLN family i believe. But interesting nonetheless
Cheers
Wow, CBS News and Paul actually talked 75% of the time and Steve was pretty quiet and reserved. Already receiving Priceline PR training?
Thanks Bruce,
I think Steve’s ear to ear smile speaks volumes though, don’t you?