US: Travellers pick car rentals over flights for holidays: travel website Kayak

Travel website Kayak is seeing more demand for car rentals than air travel from customers looking to avoid crowds and stay closer to home as US states reopen, CEO Steve Hafner said Wednesday. For those booking flights, Kayak is seeing a preference for cities like Phoenix and Denver over hotspots such as Las Vegas and New York, and for beach destinations like Hawaii and Miami. "We started Kayak as a flight search engine. I never would have guessed that almost 20 years later, we have cars on our home page." Trust analyst Naved Khan forecast bookings for online travel agencies would fall about 60% in third quarter, compared with a more than 80% plunge in the second quarter. Kayak is also looking at ways to show safety measures used by airlines in its search results. "If it's helpful to the consumer to know that American Airlines has one policy with regard to middle seats and Delta another, then we want to show that in the Kayak display," Hafner said.<br/>