Kayak.com Releases Travel Search Data & Travel Index Tool

Somewhat quietly, last week Kayak posted a new feature that opens up access to their search data using Kayak Trends. A key feature of Kayak Trend data is the KAYAK Travel Index™, an a statistical model that provides a measure of travel demand from analysis of searches on KAYAK sites, and aligns that with average combined prices people select for hotel and flights.

In Kayak Trends, you can get a snapshot of most popular destinations and search demand for them by day, week, month or year, as well as see a shift in seasonal trends by looking at the biggest upward and downward trends at a glance, or by Top 50 destinations.

Download and dissect data by destination

All of the trend data can be exported to CSV with average price data and demand averages, and one of the more interesting features of the Kayak Travel Index is the ability to look deeper into the search behavior surrounding target destinations. By putting in any airport code or city name and looking at 3 months, 6 months and 1 year trends in search demand for that location, it becomes  a useful baseline tool for a travel search marketer. You can get an at-a-glance overview of search origin data (useful for better geo-targeting in paid search ads and conversion factors), the most searched hotels in the destination, and the most popular hotel selections. Kayak says better labeling is coming next week.