Skift Take
One of the key remaining questions is whether Southwest will start offering its flights for bookings on online travel agencies. The betting here is that Southwest won’t allow Expedia or Priceline to get on board.
Twenty years after the founding of Kayak, the travel price comparison site plugged a major hole in its offering, and has started showing Southwest Airlines fares to leisure travelers.
Kayak wasn’t alone in having the product gap. Until recently, the only place vacationers could book Southwest fares was Southwest.com. Google Flights broke the ice and began displaying Southwest fares a little more than two months ago.
Online travel agencies such as Kayak’s sister company Booking.com, Expedia, Priceline, and CheapOair don’t display Southwest flights.
Corporate booking tools, including Kayak for Business, have had Southwest fares in recent years, but the airline has insisted on direct bookings for leisure travelers.
Southwest Played Hardball In Insisting on Direct Bookings
Kayak has long coveted fares from Southwest, which today is the second largest U.S. domestic carrier, and it also flies to Latin America and the Caribbean. In the past Southwest sued websites such as Skiplagged and Kiwi to block them from scraping the airline’s fare information without authorization.
Southwest Dallas to Denver flights on Kayak. Source: Kayak
Kayak soft-launched Southwest flights on Friday, and announced Monday that they now show the airline’s fares.
If you search Kayak for a Dallas-Denver flight, you can view Southwest’s Wanna Get Away and Wanna Get Away Plus fares and schedules. When you click on a View Deal button, you navigate to Southwest.com in classic metasearch fashion for booking.
The Southwest listing on Kayak also shows that travelers can bring one carry-on and can check two bags for free, and that the airline doesn’t charge change fees.
Kayak-Southwest Relationship
Kayak co-founder and CEO Steve Hafner told Skift that Southwest never sued Kayak or sent a cease and desist letter.
“Our relationship with them has been consistently great,” Hafner said. “It’s simply taken us 20 years to convince them to increase their distribution reach via meta. They’ve finally agreed and we’re thrilled.”
Southwest’s altered distribution strategy coincides with numerous changes it is making to its business model in light of demands for change from an activist investor.
Today, no online travel agencies are authorized to display Southwest fares. With metasearch sites such as Google and Kayak, the actual bookings still take place on Southwest.com.
“I have no idea what their plans are for further distribution,” Hafner said. “Meta is a much lower-cost channel than OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) and we send our referrals directly to Southwest to complete their booking. So my guess is that they’ll take those factors into consideration.”
