Kiwi.com (previously known as skypicker.com) is a Czech online travel agency[3] founded by Oliver Dlouhý and Jozef Képesi in 2012. Kiwi.com provides a fare aggregator, metasearch engine and booking for airline tickets and ground transportation. Its ticket search features Kiwi.com’s "virtual interlining" concept – itineraries combined from over 750 carriers, including many that do not usually cooperate in online bookings.[4]
History
The online portal skypicker.com was created in 2011. The company was founded in Brno by Oliver Dlouhý and Jozef Képesi. In 2016 the company acquired the domain name Kiwi.com for $800,000 and rebranded itself as Kiwi.com. Jiří Hlavenka was one of its first investors.[5] In 2017, Kiwi.com acquired a stake in Jaroslav Kokolus.[6] In 2018, Kiwi.com was included by Financial Times into the list of European firms with the top compound annual revenue growth in 2015-2018[7] and was titled ‘7th fastest growing company’ in EMEA according to Deloitte.[8]
As of June 2019, Kiwi.com’s main shareholder is General Atlantic.[9] Dlouhý and Képesi remain as major shareholders and continue to run the company.[10] Other shareholders are Touzimsky Airlines and Luboš Charčenko.[11]
In December 2022, Airasia partnered with Kiwi.com to transform the carrier into the ASEAN app for travel and lifestyle.[12][13]
In 2023, Kiwi.com partnered with Bratislava Airport to assist travelers in finding destinations starting from the Slovakian hub.[14]
Services
In 2018, Kiwi.com launched NOMAD, a special multi-city travel search tool, and Tequila, a dedicated B2B platform.[15][clarification needed]
Along with its headquarters in Brno, Kiwi.com has offices in Prague (Czech Republic), Barcelona (Spain), Bratislava (Slovakia), Košice (Slovakia), London (United Kingdom) and Miami (USA).[16]
The company is presently one of the five biggest online air ticket sellers in Europe, with an annual turnover of approximately 1.1 billion euros in 2018.[17] The company booked around 12,000 traveler itineraries daily and employed 2000 workers during 2019.[18]
In 2022, Kiwi.com sold 50 billion CZK worth of tickets.[19][20]
According to a company spokesman, Kiwi.com does not account for COVID-19 restrictions when creating travel itineraries.[21] This has led to customers being charged thousands of dollars for flights that individuals could not legally take in light of COVID-19 travel restrictions.[21][18] The company has put up barriers to refunds for individuals who have been issued legally impossible travel arrangements after booking with the site; one couple who had been issued impossible travel arrangements was only provided a refund after Kiwi.com was contacted by a New Zealand-based news website regarding their refund practices.[21][18]
Kiwi.com books seats without standard commercial agreements, leading to cost savings for customers but also complex relations with airlines, as Kiwi doesn’t share credit card details with them and the airlines also have different refund policies.[25] These complexities became apparent when delays in refund processing led to criticism, to which Kiwi.com responded by citing airlines' slow handling of refunds.[22][3]
The Observer identified Kiwi.com as one of the companies responsible for the year's "worst customer service" after it began charging customers an additional fee for "standard" customer service, with customers who do not pay the fee having to wait longer for phone support and having no access to email support.[23]
On 14 January 2021, Southwest Airlines sued Kiwi.com, alleging that its scraping of fare information from Southwest's website was a breach of contract and that Kiwi.com's use of Southwest's logo in its search results constituted trademark infringement.[26] In response, Kiwi.com removed Southwest's logo from its search results, but continued to sell Southwest tickets despite Southwest sending Kiwi.com a series of cease-and-desist demands.[27] In December 2021, a Texas court ruled that Kiwi.com is permanently prohibited from extracting information from Southwest's website and selling its tickets without authorization.[28]
On 18 August 2021, Ryanair announced that it would no longer allow passengers who booked with Kiwi.com to board flights with Kiwi.com-issued boarding passes.[29] Later, on 27 August, the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic ruled in favor of Kiwi.com.[30] In 2024, Ryanair entered into a partnership with booking platform Kiwi.com.[31][32]
^ abcdAnnual report of Kiwi.com s.r.o. for calendar year 2021
^ abCompany register at or.justice.cz, company ID 29352886, Kiwi.com s.r.o., Netherlands-registered General Atlantic PH11 B.V. owns 53.5 %, accessed 2019-10-10
