Research brief
“Main driver for vacation planning?”
August 2016

Background and core objective:

In the past we have shied away from making “best deal” the core of our communications
approach as we felt it would be a) a hygiene factor that is expected anyway and b) not
provide enough differentiation. Therefore we have often focussed on the wider
empowerment area with: “Find, what is best for you”, or by saying “so you can make the
best choice”. This has been successful, but we are aware that it potentially lacks a certain
concreteness. Especially if our hypothesis that people only care about price is true.

Our current proposition is “KAYAK builds travel search tools that help you find what you
want”. We want to evaluate whether this is really relevant and activating consumers to
action or whether we should simply say something along the lines of “KAYAK builds
travel search tools that help you getting the best price/deal/offer”.

Specific questions that we would like to have answered by this project:

- Is price the core driver for decision-making during the travel planning process?
- Are there any other primary or secondary drivers? E.g. UI, convenience,
objectivity?
- Which travel planning sites are being used - and why?
- What is the general sentiment towards travel planning websites? Do people
understand the difference between meta and OTA - and does it even matter?
- Which tools/features of KAYAK have the greatest news value / are most
activating?

Main competitors / category players:

- Skyscanner
- Momondo
- Trivago

Timing:

Actionable results required by end of September 2016

Territories for which this needs to be validated:

- Germany
- UK
- France
- Spain