• Kayak

2018 CUSTOMER CHOICE AWARD

Kayak

Overview

Kayak has a rating of 3.6 stars from 626 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally satisfied with their purchases. Reviewers satisfied with Kayak most frequently mention travel sites. Kayak ranks 20th among Travel Search Engine sites.

This company does not typically respond to reviews

Positive reviews (last 12 months): 23.5%
Positive
4
Neutral
1
Negative
12
15
See all photos

What reviewers want you to know

Positive highlights

Critical highlights

  • The Manager is extremely unprofessional and needs to take a course in customer service.
  • SAS Airlines could not help me because KAYAK booked the travel.
  • But I'll be damned if I'll be handing over my credit cards or debit cards to the hotel after this last fiasco AND LOSS.
How would you rate Kayak?
Top Positive Review

“Good Customer Service”

Ernie John C. T.
1/16/24

Since Kayak offers discounts from other websites, I appreciate it. The fact that they don't provide discounts for Southwest Airlines—which often have cheaper prices if you don't mind delayed flights—is noteworthy. When comparing prices on several booking websites, such Expedia and Priceline, I usually use Kayak.

Top Critical Review

“Worst Travel site to use!”

Steve B.
2/20/24

I recently booked a hotel room at the Hyatt House Charlotte, N.C. Using Kayak / Traveluro using the Kayak app. I selected the 2 queen bed room but they changed it to a king room and could not get them to admit their mistake or any help what so ever, terrible customer service,

Reviews (626)

Rating

Timeframe

Other

Reviews that mention popular keywords

customer service (60) use kayak (72) credit card (20) travel sites (21)
Thumbnail of user nhocn
2 reviews
0 helpful votes
June 12th, 2023
Verified purchase

I used Kayak twice. The first time it was quite good experience. But recently I faced the problem when tried to rebook the flight. It took me three hours to talk to the service rep. It was stressful! You really need to do something about it!

Products used:
Air ticket

Service
Value
Quality
Thumbnail of user claudetteh38
3 reviews
3 helpful votes
April 19th, 2022

Definitely not giving the best prices... Quite a couple of time a saw way better deals provided by other services. Ended up booking with them

Thumbnail of user dimitryp
6 reviews
38 helpful votes
June 6th, 2021

Bought a ticket through KAYAK, the airline moved the date forward, making it useless for me. Nobody could give me my money back for a while. Finnair was saying it wasn't booked through them, KAYAK was saying they did not book it (I have the receipt from them, confirmation number and all), could not get to anyone at KAYAK who would tell me what the third party is or even try to be helpful.

HOURS spent. Their insurance company won't have anything to do with this either, I could not get my money back at all, they just keep saying it's not the situation they cover.

After I wrote this review someone got in touch with me and eventually paid me back. Not the insurance money though, that was entirely wasted, never buy flight insurance, it seems to be just scam.

Service
Value
Returns
Quality
Thumbnail of user otikbak
3 reviews
5 helpful votes
October 18th, 2019

Takes just a couple of minutes to get it available and the services to me are of good standards and i look forward for more

Thumbnail of user chloer20
21 reviews
35 helpful votes
September 13th, 2018

I am pretty satisfied with its service. I rented a car for 3 days to travel around Arizona. The service I was provided with was good enough. I've rented the cheapest car there and it was in great condition. No complaints to Kayak.

Thumbnail of user evelyns6
1 review
1 helpful vote
April 3rd, 2012

I was searching for last-minute flights over Easter weekend to attend a funeral. Of course, flights were hard to find and expensive. Two or three times I found reasonable prices on kayak.com and worked out schedules with another person travelling, only to find out when I came back to buy that the prices were obsolete. So disheartening and frustrating. I guess now that I understand that their prices are possibly obsolete I would handle my decisions differently, but this was such a discouraging process for me, under already emotional circumstances.

Thumbnail of user mikem155
3 reviews
11 helpful votes
November 25th, 2013

Travel-Search-Engines.com reviewed several travel sites. In a 2013 rate comparison between Kayak.com and BestTravelCoupon.com, BTC beat Kayak on 85 out of 90 rate comparisons.

Both sites claim to search 100s of travel sites. But Kayak results tend to only post the large travel booking sites such as Expedia and Priceline. BTC searches more sites and posts better rates.

I still use Kayak to check rates but BTC is usually a better option.

Thumbnail of user kristalo
5 reviews
7 helpful votes
September 15th, 2014

We are deciding to planning a trip to malaysia. Then we are went to the travel trip site kayak.com for the travel guidelines and tips. They gave map, climate details and other details like expense, vehicles, tourist place, food and cottage etc. But we are very struggling for reaching and staying there because of the bad guidelines and the trip advice.

Service
Thumbnail of user danielp115
4 reviews
16 helpful votes
August 13th, 2016

Best rates not always up to date, will hound your inbox with ads.

Thumbnail of user lizh7
1 review
1 helpful vote
May 20th, 2013

I booked a trip on Frontier from San Diego to St. Louis through Kayak. This was the cheapest flight available which I assumed was due to a change of planes in Denver. However, after receiving my confirmation i discovered I did not have a seat assignment and needed to call Frontier directly. I called immediately and was told I could only get a seat assignment at the airport because of the discounted ticket. If I wanted a seat assignment early, I would need to pay $40 per leg.
On the day of the flight we arrived at the airport with plenty of time. The only seats available were middle seats for all 4 legs of our trip.
I don't know if this seat selection policy is standard for all Kayak bookings or just Frontier but the $100 saved up front was not worth it considering also the time spent in layovers.

Thumbnail of user sarahm85
1 review
4 helpful votes
August 24th, 2014

Kayak.com... your commercial with the teacher who shaved the back of his head stinks... my advice... find a new advertising company cause that commercial is a TURN-OFF!

Thumbnail of user lewisr6
5 reviews
7 helpful votes
January 4th, 2016

Don't list all airlines, e.g. Southwest. Also fares sometimes appear more comparable than they are because some carriers (such as Spirit and Frontier) have additional charges, like luggage, which aren't mentioned.

Thumbnail of user jamesya
5 reviews
12 helpful votes
November 4th, 2014

I have been a regular user of Kayak reviews and I would like to say that it is excellent and more useful. As far as I am concerned it has provided me a lot of knowledge on my inquiry and given more assessment to the questions that I used to raises. So it’s useful and directive as well.

Thumbnail of user jenii
1 review
1 helpful vote
October 25th, 2012

They get the job done finding a low rate for what you are after, but the customer service was a bit on the rude side. Still I am getting the refund for their error of booking three adults for the hotel, when it was just me, my husband and my child who is ten. Be sure you are getting what you paid for, and try to avoid customer service at all costs.

Thumbnail of user dakotaf
2 reviews
1 helpful vote
May 7th, 2013

I don't recommend using only kayak for hotel booking. They don't show all possible deals, only some available part. It's 50/50; sometimes you can get good booking deal and sometimes there are better, and kayak doesn't show that

Thumbnail of user simonh59
2 reviews
20 helpful votes
May 22nd, 2015

On many a trip in past years, I used Kayak.com and got some pretty good deals. Then all of a sudden the ad's on tv stopped for Kayak and then it was Trivago.com, well... they all either have the exact same software or something else is up. I'm not sophisticated enough to figure it out, but the good deals are far and between now on Kayak, and yet I can get some good deals, albeit occasionally on sites LIKE Trivago. Considering I am extremely cheap when I travel and the fact that I like to stay in nice hotels (I know...), I am searching multiple sites from the ones mentioned to hotwire.com to the actual Marriott or Hyatt ($#*! Hilton) sites trying to find a deal that makes sense with price, promotions, points, etc.) It really gets down to where you're going. Deals are out there you just need to shop multiple avenues to get the best deal, never just check one site like Kayak or any other.

Thumbnail of user richardd19
2 reviews
9 helpful votes
March 25th, 2012

I prefer this site over hotwire.com. I had to make a recent trip to Broward, Florida for the purchase of a real estate; Kayak provided better results.

305 ratings were submitted through the Sitejabber Browser Extension or converted from reviews due to lack of content.

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From the business

Kayak is a large price comparison search engine for travel. It has prices for plane tickets, hotels, car rentals, and vacation packages. Kayak doesn't sell any of these services directly, but instead directs you to another site where you can make a purchase.

Company Representative

Thumbnail of user jimg24
jim g.
Typically does not respond to reviews

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