Vakay creates first vacation destination search engine

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Vakay creates first vacation destination search engineTravel startup founded by former Group Head of Online Partnerships at lastminute.com looks to revolutionise holiday search

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.  

For more information please visit http://www.vakay.co.uk

ABOUT VAKAY.CO.UK 

Vakay Travel Group Ltd was founded in 2015 by Tom Davies, who previous to starting the business headed up all online partnership activity at online travel icon lastminute.com. The company trialed a content focused beta version of the website in early 2015, and subsequently after receiving strong customer feedback began work on the new destination search engine.

Based in London the company has spent the last three months building the new website in partnership with uCreate.it, who have been responsible for a number of high profile startup development projects.  The website is supported by a bespoke backend system, to ensure accurate destination pricing.

The companies short term target is to secure investment which will allow them to scale the search features, and bring new partners onboard to improve availability. The long term ambition is to become the number one holiday search website in the UK, leading to a European expansion.

RELATED TOPICS: GreeceGreek tourism newsTourism in GreeceGreek islandsHotels in GreeceTravel to GreeceGreek destinations Greek travel marketGreek tourism statisticsGreek tourism report

 

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