KAYAK is owned by Booking Holdings (the United States, NASDAQ: BKNG), which acquired the brand on 21 May 2013 for $1.8 billion.[1][2] KAYAK was founded in 2004 in Stamford, Connecticut and was independent until 2013.
Evidence: Booking Holdings Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K filed 2026-02-18, SEC EDGAR, 18 February 2026. Verified from filings; last checked .
KAYAK searches other travel sites rather than selling tickets itself, and was founded in 2004 by people who had built Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz. Priceline acquired it in 2013 for about $1.8 billion, so a metasearch tool that ranks agencies is owned by one of them.
Sentences about KAYAK from Booking Holdings's latest annual filing[1], copied word for word.
KAYAK, headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, provides online meta-search services that allow consumers to easily search and compare travel itineraries and prices from hundreds of online travel platforms at once.
Our arrangements with OTCs and travel service providers to provide information in connection with KAYAK's meta-search services are non-exclusive and terminable with little notice.
For the KAYAK reporting unit's goodwill, we recognized an impairment charge of $180 million for the three months ended September 30, 2025, resulting in an adjusted carrying value of $203 million at September 30, 2025.
A plain count of the times the name appears in the text of each annual report, not counting the start of a sentence. A brand that an owner writes about more is usually one it treats as central. The brand is named more often than it was three years earlier.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Open the full Booking Holdings ownership tree →
See the full Booking Holdings brand portfolio (6) →
Booking Holdings controls 6 brands on Brandtree, 6 of them in internet & digital.
The 8 brands in travel metasearch on Brandtree belong to 6 owners. The largest is lastminute.com Group, with 2.
| Brand | Owner | Owner based in |
|---|---|---|
| Hotelscan | lastminute.com Group | 🇳🇱 Netherlands |
| Qunar | Trip.com Group | 🇨🇳 China |
| Liligo | eDreams ODIGEO | 🇪🇸 Spain |
| trivago | Expedia Group | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Tripadvisor | Tripadvisor | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Jetcost | lastminute.com Group | 🇳🇱 Netherlands |
| Skyscanner | Trip.com Group | 🇨🇳 China |
Booking Holdings is a publicly listed company headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States, founded in 1997. Brandtree records 6 brands under its control, and it is listed as NASDAQ: BKNG.
Booking Holdings was called Priceline until 2018, when it renamed itself after the Dutch business it had bought for $133 million in 2005 and which had grown far larger than its American parent. It is the largest online travel company in the world, and its brands are the main alternative to Expedia's.
Booking Holdings: full profile, brands and acquisition history →
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 2,549 brands that began in the United States. 478 of them (19%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country; KAYAK is not one of them.
Priceline acquired KAYAK for about $1.8 billion. A metasearch site that ranks travel agencies against each other thereby became owned by one of the largest of them, which is the arrangement most of its users would be surprised by.
The parent company of KAYAK is Booking Holdings, a publicly listed company headquartered in the United States.
Yes. KAYAK originated in the United States in 2004 and its owner, Booking Holdings, is also headquartered in the United States.
Booking Holdings completed its acquisition of KAYAK on 21 May 2013, after announcing the deal on 8 November 2012. The deal was valued at $1.8 billion (enterprise value).
KAYAK was an independent company from its founding in 2004 in Stamford, Connecticut until Booking Holdings acquired it in 2013.
Yes. As of 9 October 2026, KAYAK is still owned by Booking Holdings. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
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