Stamford-primarily based Kayak to open its have hotel in Miami Seaside

STAMFORD — Since its founding in 2004, Kayak has grown into one of the travel industry’s main on the web-reserving companies.

Now, amid the upheaval of the coronavirus pandemic, it is launching a major brick-and-mortar project.

Stamford-headquartered Kayak is opening subsequent month a corporation-branded boutique lodge in Miami Beach front, Fla. A undertaking numerous many years in the making, Kayak officers want to use the 52-space Kayak Miami Beach front as a structure lab to create and exam the firm’s accommodation technology while also presenting a excellent visitor practical experience in a single of its most-well known places.

“I’ve had a bunch of individuals talk to me ‘Why start a resort ideal now?’ It looks like an odd time to start,” Kayak CEO Steve Hafner reported in an job interview. “The truth is we’ve been scheming on this for a pair of a long time now. If I could have launched it previously, I would have. But we had to make a large amount of upgrades to the resort to get it into Kayak brand name-deserving form.”

The locale mostly demonstrates the acceptance of the Miami space, which regularly ranks as 1 of Kayak users’ 10-most-searched destinations. The residence is yards from the city’s Collins Park and a pair blocks from the beach front. Kayak has leased a 1934 artwork deco constructing, which was earlier named Lifetime House Collins Park.

Even in the course of the pandemic, South Florida is however viewing considerable vacationer activity, as the state has enacted 1 of the country’s speediest reopening options. Florida at present has no travel limitations in position.

“I believe the restoration is by now underway,” Hafner said. “I’m really down in this article in Miami Beach front — I stay right here total-time — and with the limitations eased below, dining places are opening at entire ability, and lodge are open up for business enterprise. What we’ve currently viewed from Kayak query info is we’re only 25 p.c off pre-pandemic amounts in conditions of consumer interest in Miami.”

By means of its web page, kayakmb.com, Kayak Miami Seaside is accepting reservations for stays starting on April 11. Common fees are close to $229 for a “cozy king” area, according to Kayak.

Reflecting the era of social distancing, Kayak officers said all of the hotel’s check out-ins and verify-outs would be “contactless,” by possibly Kayak’s cell application or a digital lobby kiosk. The application will supply 24-7 entry to hotel personnel and support, notifications of on-assets activities, space-prepared alerts, itinerary administration and housekeeping requests.

Kayak is partnering on the new hotel with hotel model and management organization Lifetime Home, which will regulate the institution.

“Our mission is to produce benefit for impartial way of life hotels and their homeowners,” Rami Zeidan, founder and CEO of Lifetime House, reported in a statement. “Together with Kayak, we can speed up our management in this speedily evolving area.”

Kayak officers claimed that they are exploring other Kayak-branded resort options in the U.S. and overseas.

“We’re not intending to flip Kayak into a resort brand name on the scale of a Hilton, Hyatt or Marriott,” Hafner claimed. “We’re in fact acquiring into the organization so we can much better inform our software growth. What we want to do is build a computer software product or service that we can give for totally free to every independent lodge and house operator out there, so when another person works by using the Kayak app they can stroll into these spots and have an improved visitor working experience.”

Kayak is component of Norwalk-dependent Booking Holdings, the No. 210 organization on very last year’s Fortune list. Kayak’s primary places of work are at 7 Current market St., in the South Conclude of Stamford, with about 80 staff based mostly there.