CONNECTICUT, Imagine the possibilities when key executives behind Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia, and Intuit join together to create the next generation of online travel. The new Internet travel “Dream Team,” the people behind Kayak Software Corp., has launched the public beta, or preview version of Kayak.com.

Only the people who invented online travel could develop a site powerful enough to meet the needs of today’s online travelers. Kayak’s “Dream Team” includes:

• From Orbitz: Steve Hafner, Co-Founder and CEO. Steve was Executive Vice President of Consumer Travel at Orbitz, Inc., which he helped found in November 1999.
  
  
• From Intuit: Paul English, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer. Paul was the Vice President of Technology at Intuit, Inc. following its acquisition of Boston Light Software, an e-commerce company which he founded in 1999. Also from Intuit are Bill O'Donnell, Chief Architect; Paul Schwenk, VP of Engineering; and Jim Giza, VP Operations.
  
  
• From Travelocity: Terry Jones, Chairman of the Board. Terry was President and CEO of Travelocity.com which he helped found in 1996.
  
  
• From Expedia: Greg Slyngstad, Director. Greg was Senior Vice President of Destinations and Lodging at Expedia.com, which he helped found while at Microsoft.
  
  
• Other notables include: Keith Melnick, formerly a manager at the Boston Consulting Group, where he served on the launch team of Orbitz, Inc.; Matt Mancuso, formerly the Corporate Controller at Hotwire, which he helped found in 2000; and Drew Patterson, formerly the Director of Pricing, Distribution, and E-commerce for Starwood Hotels and Resorts, where he oversaw the formation of Travelweb, a hotel industry consortium to distribute net rate inventory.

“Kayak.com will become the savvy travelers’ most useful resource for making informed decisions during their travel planning,” said Steve Hafner, Co-founder and CEO. “We created the site to meet the needs of today’s consumers who are frustrated at having to search multiple sites to find the best deal. With just one click, visitors at Kayak.com will be able to see prices and services in real-time from over 60 leading travel sites. Kayak.com’s reach is so comprehensive that consumers will often find an itinerary on Kayak.com that they may not have found on their own. Not only does Kayak.com provide consumers with more travel options than any other site, but it also gives consumers the freedom to choose where to buy their trip through our innovative MultiBook™ technology.”

As a travel aggregator and a technology company, Kayak.com does not sell a product, but instead offers a comprehensive search engine that scours over 60 online travel sites, providing prices and itineraries for more than 550 airlines and 85,000 hotels. Kayak.com’s results page displays more choice of available itinerary/price combinations than any other online travel site and is the only travel search engine that lets the consumer choose where to purchase the preferred itinerary—making comparison shopping across the Web easier than ever.

“Kayak.com is the first travel aggregator to use Rich Internet Architecture (RIA) to ensure quick, real-time filtering and sorting of hundreds of results,” said Paul English, Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer. “RIA allows Kayak.com to filter duplicate fares, displaying a clean, easy-to-read results screen. Consumers can easily change search parameters, such as time of departure, airport preference, or airlines and see the reorganized results instantaneously. No other site does that.”

To help further make travel planning easy, Kayak.com allows travelers to post and view ratings and reviews and access information from other respected travel sources like Frommer’s and Fodor’s. In addition, the site remembers most recent searches and airport preferences. Over time, Kayak.com will let consumers specify their preferences for airlines, stops, fares, hotel star rating, and hotel locations so options will automatically be filtered and displayed based on those preferences.

“Think of Kayak.com as the ‘Google meets Amazon’ of travel search. Kayak.com finds the most options, allows you to share tips and information with travelers like you and remembers what you like – all to put the purchasing power back in the consumer’s hands,” added Hafner.

In anticipation of its consumer launch early next year, Kayak will continue to add features and functionality, such as multi-city, one-way, passenger-type and cabin-type search as well as building proprietary content and personalization components, including member pages, among other enhancements and partnerships. Kayak.com is free to consumers.