Kayak CEO Says Online Travel 'Still Sucks,' Wants to Stay 'Until It's Fixed'

12.05.2024 - 10:11 / skift.com / Steve Hafner / Dennis Schaal

The Kayak website launched to the public in May 2004 as a pioneer in travel metasearch.

When Kayak had its IPO in 2012, it was such a big deal in the travel and tech world that Skift published a live blog to follow every development.

A few months later, Priceline Group – now called Booking Holdings – announced a deal to scoop it up  $2.1 billion.

We caught up with Steve Hafner, co-founder and CEO of Kayak and also OpenTable, on a Zoom call while he was in an Uber in Manhattan. We also exchanged emails with the other co-founder, serial entrepreneur Paul English about the 20th anniversary of Kayak’s launch.

The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Dennis Schaal: So, Steve, why are you still here? Why are you still at Kayak?

Steve Hafner: Because online travel hasn’t been solved yet. So look, it’s come a long way in the last 20 years. I think when we started, online travel really sucked. It just made the transition from offline to online, but it was still like a sea of blue links and nine flight results. When you made a change, you had to wait for something to load.

It’s a lot better now. 20 years later, we have mobile apps, we have thousands of search results. It’s pretty easy to buy stuff now. But it still kind of sucks, because it’s overwhelming – the amount of information now.

I’m hopeful that 20 years from now, it’ll be a lot better. AI is a new technology everyone hopes will help it get there. But it still sucks. So until it’s fixed, I’m still going to be around.

Perhaps Glenn Fogel (CEO of Kayak’s parent company, Booking Holdings) will retire soon (or eventually). Most founders, after they sell the company, they’re gone in a year. But you landed in this gigantic company with a lot of opportunities. So what’s ahead for you at Booking holdings?

I have no idea. It’s never been about the job – it’s been about the product. We have this problem called online travel and we want to make it better. And we have a lot of unfinished business, so I’m delighted to still be with the company all this time.

I wish we had completed the job and actually solved it, but we haven’t. As long as Booking Holdings is willing to have me stick around and I can be helpful to our team, then I’ll be here. It has nothing to do with my role at the company.

Any thoughts on the the early team that launched Kayak, and the process for launching Kayak? How you guys got started?

The alchemy of successful company is kind of hard to pin down but it starts with a good idea. A great team, sufficient capital, and then luck. And we got all those pieces put together at the right time.

So that original founding team was phenomenal: Paul English, Bill O’Donnell Paul Schwenk, Jeff Rago, but a bunch of guys. But I think the