Travel startup founded by former group head of online partnerships at lastminute.com looks to revolutionise holiday search.
LONDON – Vakay.co.uk has launched the first travel search engine to provide holiday destination results purely based on the customer’s budget and travel dates.
Travellers are now able to search for their holiday without knowing their destination in advance, the website aggregates package holiday pricing from a number of partners including Thomson, First Choice, Thomas Cook and OnTheBeach. This eliminates the long search process involved in finding a holiday within budget, which has been estimated can involve as many as 17 different websites.
Currently the vast majority of package holiday websites only allow the customer to search knowing the destination, and more often the specific resort they wish to travel to. Those websites who do currently allow open destination searches deliver a vast mixture of package holidays, which have no context to the customer’s requirements or preferences. Vakay.co.uk provides the customer with a clear list of destinations that match their budget and travel dates, before they then compare accommodation options.
“I saw a gap in the market for a search engine that simplified the holiday search process, it seemed to me that all of the current websites expected the customer to arrive having done all the hard work themselves.” Said Tom Davies, Vakay.co.uk founder “I believe that Vakay.co.uk not only saves the customer a lot of research time, but also allows them to discover destinations they wouldn’t have otherwise considered”
“The original concept came from my own holiday experiences where hours would be spent searching for destinations that matched my budget, often being bombarded with ‘cheap deals’ rather than displaying all of the options available. When I then saw this trend emerging through customer feedback within the industry, I decided there must be a better way to deliver holiday search”.
In addition to their budget and travel dates, Vakay.co.uk allows the customer to pivot their destination results based on flight time and temperature preferences. There are plans in place to develop further pivot options, which will allow the customer to really discover the destination that is perfect for their individual holiday requirements.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
