Kayak Releases New iPhone Travel App

Travel search engine Kayak has released a new version of the Kayak for iPhone (News - Alert) application integrating the site’s baggage fees tool. 'Coming only two months after the company launched a major upgrade to the application, the updated app also adds new flight, hotel, and car rental search capabilities,' company officials say.


Saying mobile travel search is 'a major focus of our product innovation,' Kayak Chief Architect Bill O’Donnell said, 'people want to know how much different airlines charge for checking bags, so we’re pleased to add this feature to our iPhone app.'

New features include the aforementioned baggage fees tool, flight tracking, other flight search filters and a hotel search by name. There's also a function for maps for hotel and car rental searches, faster search results for flight, hotel and car rental searches and e-mail share for search results.

In addition to the free Kayak for iPhone app, Kayak also updated the paid version of its iPhone app, Kayak First Class, that includes the ability to search for first and business class airline fares. The company also plans to include these new features in upcoming updates to its Android and BlackBerry (News - Alert) applications.

Also recently TMC's Jyothi Shanbhag reported that Yapta (News - Alert).com, the airfare tracking service that provides users the do-it-yourself travel planners with the tools and information needed to get info on flight and hotel bookings, has announced new partnership with Kayak to power its flight search engine.

Yapta 'has reportedly incorporated Kayak's flight search to provide travelers with a more comprehensive airfare tracking service and an enhanced travel planning experience,' Yapta officials say.

 Tom Romary, president and CEO of Yapta said that by introducing Kayak's best-in-class flight search engine, Yapta members now have greater access to flight data and are able to track prices for virtually any flight in the world.