The On Holiday Group has struck a deal with Kayak UK to create exclusive holiday deals in what was described as the first ever attempt to combine metasearch with flash sales.
OHG will source and contract deals which will be published at the top of the site as Kayak Holidays. OHG will also handle all of Kayak Holidays’ bonding and back office support.
These will be promoted as ‘Recommended Hotel’ offers and Kayak will create 15,000 dedicated hotel landing pages to help it promote the offers on Google.
The move comes after Kayak’s recent move into the package holiday sector with the Holidays section of its site comparing traditional packages, dynamic packages and component sales.
OHG chief executive Steve Endacott said of the deal: “We’re providing the holidays at the very top of the pyramid.
“We already power a lot of the premium positions on Teletext but this is different because we will source and contract Kayak’s top deals for them.
“The problem with flash sales is that the chance of getting the absolute right holiday for the right customer at the right time and the right price is relatively low. Flash sales are good at providing consumers with inspiration for people and at dragging people into your site.
“But the benefit of this combined flash sale/price comparison site is that you can go to hotels and ask for market-leading rates so you can benchmark it as the cheapest within the market and we can also provide the range in case customers want more choice.”
Endacott added: “Flash sale sites try to make a mystery out of what they do but all they do is check the reviews on TripAdvisor and then look at the internet to see if they can get it any cheaper.
“All we’re doing is the same thing but in an automated fashion because we have customer review scores built onto our programmes.”
Jan Valentin, vice-president of package travel at Kayak, said: “Kayak Holidays already includes most main UK OTAs to provide a huge range of inventory and deals from UK holiday providers to our customer.
“This partnership with OHG will see our customer further benefit from cost savings through the exclusively sourced deals and we’re delighted to be working with OHG on this project.”