Stealth Startup Kango Working on Semantic Search For Travel
Erick Schonfeld
45 comments »
Does the world really need another travel site? With Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, TripAdvisor, Farecast, TripHub, Yapta, and many more, prospective travelers already have more than enough to choose from. (With an estimated $87 billion in travel booked online, it’s no wonder why). Soon they will be able to add Kango to that list.
The startup, which has been in stealth-mode until now, does manage to add a new twist to search travel. It is indexing 18 million opinions and reviews across 1,000 travel-related sites to derive the best travel search results based on what type of trip you want to take. If you are planning a romantic getaway in Big Sur, you will get one set of results. If you specify that you are looking for a family outing instead, you will get another. Or you can look for pet-friendly hotels and activities. Of course, you can also search by price or amenity, like any other travel site. And you can see where each hotel or activity is located on a small Google Map.
But what’s promising about Kango is the way it slices up search subjectively. Kango is building a semantic search engine focussed narrowly on travel. It parses the language in all of those reviews and guides, and categorizes them by generating tags for them. “You cannot wait for users to add tags, you have to derive them,” says CEO Yen Lee. So hotels that have been reviewed across the Web (on sites like Yahoo Travel, TripAdvisor, or Yelp) with words such as “perfect,” “relaxing,” “couples,” “honeymoon,” or “spa” would rank higher in a search for romantic travel. Hotels associated with the words “kitchen,” “pool,” and “kids,” would rank higher in a search for family trips.
Whether this will be enough to draw people from other travel sites is hard to say at this point. But Kango’s executive team has an impressive pedigree. Lee is a former general manager of Yahoo Travel. His search architect, Huanjin Chen, used to be the search architect at eBay. His natural-language search scientist, Boris Galitsky, used to do work for the British government. And his head of marketing, Elliott Ng, headed up marketing for Intuit’s QuickBooks and is the founder of Netcentives.
Lee estimates there are 6 billion to 8 billion travel-related searches done every year, and he thinks Kango can help expose more of the hidden gems in travel that today don’t quite make it to the first page of most travel sites. He plans to make money on travel-specific search advertising, rather than on booking or listing fees.
Kango will be rolling out a limited beta in the next few weeks, and is reserving 100 spots for TechCrunch readers who sign up here.
Nice write-up. With such a team, this is definitely something worth looking at.
I learned about Semantic web in my knowledge management class. Very nice to see it’s being implemented here. Kudos!
The idea of semantic search for travel may be compelling, but overall seems somewhat thin as a business focus. That is, unless they can either expand beyond the initial service offering or cut a deal with other travel-related sites.
People using the web for travel are interested in at least 3 core activities:
1) Find travel options that meet their interests and needs
2) Book travel
3) Community-based interaction around travel
From what the article says, Kango seems to be aiming for (1). Sites like TripUp are focused on (3), and sites like TripAdvisor seem to be trying to combine all of the above.
The bandwagon for “Travel 2.0″ just got another rider, though the semantic search angle seems innovative.
Everyone seems to be wanting to move towards a semantic web….I like my solitude! I like screwing up on my own! I don’t want 100 million+ people screwing up along with me! Maybe it’s just cuz I’m anti-social
This search is a good idea, but doing a press release this early was a bad idea.
google.com/travel
You know it’s coming now. That’s what you get when you show your cards. Yeah, they’ll manage an invite to check it out. I call neo-kiko.com on the lack of judgement.
You should have used rumors and indirection instead. Oh well. Next startup they work on, they will be more careful.
@ Chris - Of course it was coming! Google does everything
Now wait a minute. google.com/travel is just a page pitching travel-related AdWords.
Now I’m not inviting speculation on whether Google might get into that crowded vertical business. Or that it doesn’t seem to fit with the model they’ve got so far. There are plenty of other blogs where we can discuss Google’s master plans.
Great write-up. Will be interesting to see how it compares with all the other well-established travel sites. Looking forward to the launch.
Another B.S from California startup… Yeah… Yeah…. California had better Web 2.0. LOL
how could you not mention:
a) http://www.kayak.com
b) http://www.farecompare.com
those are by far the 2 most useful up and coming travel sites
Hi,
I always wonder about copyright issues and breaking terms of service when I see companies like this that build their content from other sites. For example, in one of the screen shots here on Kango, I see a list of reviews from Yahoo Travel, IgoUgo … Can Kango and other companies use content this way? I understand they reference the other sites but is this enough or do they have to go through partnership agreements with those sites before using their content?
Thanks
Sam
Thanks for the post Erick.
There are well-established sites for consumers who know what they want to book (e.g. Expedia or Holiday Inn) or if are price shopping (e.g. FareCast or SideStep). We want to help the consumers who need help deciding what to book; folks who haven’t decided where to go, where to stay or what to do.
And we believe we can personalize the decision-making process to help consumers make more informed decisions, faster. That’s why we did all that work to collect, organize and semantically-analyze all those traveler opinions – to enable travelers to find more relevant choices based on the kind of destination (e.g. warm weather beach…), what they would like to do (e.g. outdoor and active…), who they are traveling with (e.g. kids, pets…).
We feel we really are just getting started and we welcome your feedback and that of the TC community!
This is great to see. I like that you ask if the world needs another travel site, but the better question is does the world need a better travel site. I think it is clear that the answer is yes.
Is is now easy to find the best prices and schedules for flights. Problem solved. If you like to stay in large chain hotels, finding the best prices and rooms are simple as well.
But once you get out of the comfort zone of these areas, you are left with a huge universe of traveler opinions that may or may not be relevant to the way you like to travel or the things you like to do. And the tail in travel is so long that only people like me have the patience to spend hours searching, calling, posting and pleading for help finding it and sifting through it.
The funny part is that the glut of reviews and travel opinions is on the web now, but the hard part is finding it and this site seems like a good step i helping to personalize it.
Sam,
You beat me to it - I’m frankly surprised that Kango can build a business on the back of scraping content from sites like TripAdvisor and Yahoo Travel. This is clearly against their TOS.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a cease and desist order may be imminently forthcoming…
almost too pointless to even comment on. almost.
How can you not mention http://www.TheRandomAct.com
We are one of the smallest travel social network in the world (right now). 30 something locals in Budapest waiting for tourists to ask some travel questions and recommendations so that we can answer them and be their local guide.
Seriously: http://www.Kayak.com is one of the best thing what happened to the online travel sphere in the last couple of years. I would never go directly to Expedia or Orbitz. My fare search starts at http://www.Kayak.com I may and up purchasing on Expedia, but searching on Kayak.com for sure. I wonder how long it will take before they get acquired.
The concept of harnessing and searching the collective knowledge of the blogsphere is not a new idea. To date, Google and Technorati are NOT great at sorting and providing results from the blogsphere in a comprehensive view.
Travel is a good candidate for vertical search. Health, sports, and entertainment are other candidates. The “wisdom of crowds” idea works provided that their is enough information to work with. Since Kango is harvesting information that is already available, they should have a strong base of content to work with.
The team has experience with driving traffic and scaling consumer Internet businesses. With their dedicated focus on travel, Kango has the ability to outrun Google.
Although the travel space has many competitors, I hope that Kango does raise the bar. The more competition to accelerate more relevant information, the better.
Sam/Nicola, isn’t this identical to the search model proven out by Google. Show little bits from the travel site where the information comes from, then point to the travel site for the consumer who wants more? Actually, sites like tripadvisor themselves starting with that model. they use to link out to other sites from where they collected data.
Disclaimer up-front: I’m an investor, so consider me biased.
What I love about Kango — in addition to a truly amazing team they’ve assembled — is that they are addressing what I feel is a huge open need in travel: the ability to really get great advice and ideas around what will personally work for YOU.
Sure, if you know you want to go to Vegas, there are a million sites that let you rate and review hotel rooms.
But what if you are planning your honeymoon and want someplace romantic but also adventurous, and you want to figure out the best adventures and you love mountains? Or what if you have kids and you want the best family-friendly places where you can hire a chef and nanny locally? There’s no travel site I’m aware of yet that can really give good advice on WHERE to go and let you evaluate very different options.
Also, personalized advice and itineraries are huge. For my honeymoon, one of the best things was a friend gave us the itinerary he had put together, along with comments on what he loved or didn’t love about each place, where to go, etc.
No travel sites right now let users effectively search out gems like this. Kango has the potential to change that.
I think ultimately, these guys have a killer team who will really listen and evolve the site based on what users want, along with a fantastic vision for a missing element of travel: getting personal insights across a broader spectrum of travel options… the “travel guide” market for specific locations is a crowded space, but the overall universe of where to travel to based on user content is hardly tapped.
Stay tuned and give it a try. I think you’ll really like what they’ve put together and more importantly give them feedback — this is a team that will evolve and ultimately create a huge new play in travel.
Just my (admittedly biased) two cents… I totally think Kango will rock!!
Sounds like a scraper site to me. A slick version, but scraper nonetheless. I guess “semantic search” is a euphemism for “lifting other people’s content”.
Congrats, Yen — looking forward to seeing the site.
Don’t forget about TripIt, the only travel site included in TechCrunch 40. After you get your advice and then book, TripIt (http://www.tripit.com) organizes everything into a single, master itinerary. We’re lightly touching on the semantic web by extracting meaning from purchase confirmation emails you forward to plans@tripit.com.
Kayak is great, but how many travel sites can I mention? On the site-scraping issue, Kango is just linking to those sites and sending traffic their way—no different than any other search engine.
i think their use case is totally flawed - nobody i know sits around saying “i really want to go someplace on vacation but i have *no idea* where - and i like ponies, coral reefs, and ice cream!”
i think the more likely use case is “i’d really love to go to hawaii, but which island should i spend the most time on? and what should i do there?” - and tripadvisor pretty much nails that use case - they let you read other people’s experiences, see what’s worth doing and whats not, what to pass on and what you shouldn’t miss.
oh and tripadvisor actually comes up with their own content, too, instead of just gimping it.
and of course there is the new startup YowTrip (www.yowtrip.com). The social network for travelers…. How could you have left that one off?
First of all, people do fantasize all the time about taking a beach vacation, but do not have a specific idea in mind where they will go. The same people also will take some trips where they know where they want to go. The point is that different trips have different starting points in your mind about destination and activity.
Travel is about dreaming and escaping your everyday life. If I get what these guys are trying to do, it can only be helpful to the consumer to find sites that they never would be able to with mainstream search. Also, it gives the little sites the ability to compete for the consumer with the massive engines if they make their content searchable.
Nice post, it was very informative. This site should be worth spending my time.
When are they going live ?
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
I saw this site http://www.tripcart.com which seems to be a similar idea. When I first saw the site I thought it was a good idea but the site wasn’t designed well.It looks like Kango will be better.
@Jon, your thoughts on “core activities” is pretty close to ours. We think there are 5 steps: planning, price shopping, booking, organizing and community sharing. We’re focused on helping customers take the 1st step for all kinds of destinations, places to stay and things to do – not just chain hotels and the most popular destinations
@Sam and @Nicola, good question. Our site handles copyrighted works the same way that Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines do. We are indexing the whole story from a third party website but only displaying a small snippet of the story. And we are fully attributing and providing links and traffic to the source. And we respect robots.txt just like Google and other search engines. Given we are following commonly accepted internet practices, our lawyers give us a clean bill of health. @Ashish, good answer!
@The Random Act. We think there is big opportunity to better connect travelers with those small, great sites that might not ever be found in a general web search engine. That is why we think personalization is key…so we can help people express their intent and get more unique travel Websites. BTW please contact us so we can get you in our catalog!
@Eric Tilenius. Thanks for the vote of confidence. Mum’s the word on the other investors please!
@Scott. We like TripIt too. I’ve known Gregg for years and I think organizing after you’ve booked is a key need and complementary to the travel ecosystem.
@Gilltots. Nice breakdown of “where to go” vs. “what specifically to do when I get there”. We think there are even better ways to solve this than what’s out there today.
@phenom. Our public beta will be based on the feedback we get from consumers during private beta. If you have time, could you sign up for private beta and give us your feedback please?
What fun! With a juicy TechCrunch mention, it’s a taste of Prime Time for Kango.
@Yen: Nice response to the copyright issues dealing with content acquisition.
A number of readers of raised the question, “What another travel site?” The answer was given in the opening paragraph: “It’s an $87 billion market!”
I hope that Kango has a secret sauce that will enable them to create additional revenue streams!
We at Microsoft will have nothing to do with AntiSematics like these people, we accept people of all races and religions (well maybe not mormons).
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Why elaborate upon a site to 600,000 TC readers that is still in closed beta?
nice write-up.
the site looks good too..
I’m no expert on semantic search…but from the write up this looks like a great service. I signed up for the beta and can’t wait to try it. A lot of times I have a type of trip in mind, but not sure where exactly to go… I usually find myself going where friends have already gone or just searching the web for any type of info I can dig up. Hope this is the solution!
That’s a pretty impressive team. Although there are many travel sites out there, i think this offers something quite unique. I definitely will be using the search features when planning my honeymoon. I think it’s an interesting idea and i could definitely see myself using this site.
Good write-up Erick.