That’s cool: Travel search by Emoji - How Kayak will change the game

Toronto, Canada – 5 July 2017 –
Today, Kayak is rolling out travel search by emoji with the introduction of ten searchable emoji/city combinations, with more on the way. From the maple leaf for Toronto to the Statue of Liberty emoji for NYC, travelers can now use the following emojis to kick off their next flight and/or hotel search.

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“We are always looking for ways to make Kayak even more fun and easy to use – adding emoji to the search experience is a great way to do that, said David Solomito, VP NA brand marketing. “However our users want to search, whether it’s with emojis, bots or voice – we will be there.”

“As soon as we started assigning emojis to cities, debate over which city should get the pizza, the beer and hockey emoji began among our team,” said Solomito. “We decided to start with emoji combinations that were indisputable and from there, open it up to a public vote to help us decide the next round of emojis to add to Kayak.”

Travelers can visit 1 to cast their vote on the next 15 emoji/city combinations. Emojis up for a Canadian city match include: Hockey (Montreal and Toronto), the Pride Flag (Toronto) and Ski/Snowboarding (Vancouver). Other emojis up for voting are Baseball, Pizza, Beer Mug, High-heeled Shoe, Unicorn, the Dancing Lady, Guitar, Taco, Football, Coffee, Tropical Drink, Surfing and yes, the smiling poop. KAYAK offers four city suggestions in each emoji category and the opportunity for a write-in vote.

The emoji + city pair with the most amount of votes in each category will win, ultimately giving travelers the ability to search for up to 25 destinations on Kayak via emoji.

Voting will conclude on July 13, 2017 and the winning combinations will be revealed on July 17 just in time for World Emoji Day. On the 17th, Kayak will also make searchable the country flag emojis, bringing the total number of searchable emojis on Kayak to over 250.

Searchable emojis will kick-off searches in the U.S. and Canada on desktop and mobile devices as well as on 1.