Yet ANOTHER New Player in the Hotel Booking Game

Consider it fall-out from the ever increasing cost of airfares. But this week, Kayak.com announced that it was expanding from being a simple  search engine into one that will also tackle hotel bookings (perhaps the execs there are anticipating a summer of roadtrips, as crowding the family car becomes more affordable than flying?). As part of the Travelocity Partner Network, the site will allow users to either book at Kayak directly or through the other websites that Kayak searches. It will be interesting to see if this new policy leads to a tilting of the results.

I was never a big user of Kayak for hotels, having found the breadth of its search not comparable to what was offerred by HotelsCombined.com. This newest move gives me even less confidence in its prowess as a wide-ranging and impartial search engine. I plan to check back in on Kayak in a month or so to see how this change is affecting its search.