Kayak has made its smartphone app almost unrecognisable from less than 12 months ago with the addition this week of an option to book hotels within the system.
Kayak made the leap from providing an app version of its existing services to integrating a booking service for flights early in 2010, triggering plenty of debate as to whether the mobile user experience could ever fit with the metasearch model.
The reason Kayak gave at the time (amid some surprise from the marketplace) is that flight search on an app might have performed adequately for the user, but there was no guarantee that once they were sent off to the airline website that the booking would be as easy, or even possible at all.
A valid and admirable reason, perhaps.
But now it appears Kayak's app is practically a complete booking service in its own right. Goodbye metasearch model.
The recently introduced and (again) slightly eyebrow raising move to include direct hotel bookings on the main website through a deal with Travelocity subsidiary World Choice Travel (part of the Travelocity Partner Network), has extended to the apps.
Obviously Kayak has not instantly become an online travel agency overnight, but it is certainly trying to challenge (and change) the idea that metasearch can be replicated on a mobile.
When the Travelocity engine was added to the main site in mid-March this year, Kayak said the Book Now button on mobile would address the imbalance between number of search queries coming via mobiles (8%) and revenue (less than 1%).
Mobile revenues, of course, may take a temporary tumble in the meantime following the removal of ads from all of the Kayak apps.