Aviasales.ru

The service was founded in 2007 as Konstantin Kalinov's personal travel blog where he aggregated special offers from airline companies. Initially there was only one editor working with Kalinov, and their only revenue came from advertisements (30 to 50 US dollars per month). Later on, the company employed programmers who developed search algorithms to look through airline offers. The first search engine was coded by Anton Kirillov, a graduate from Baltic State Technical University, who has since left the company.[4]

The first ticket booked on Aviasales was a flight from Moscow to Paris in 2008.[5]

In 2009 Kalinov asked Max Kraynov to evaluate the company who, built a financial model and advised Kalinov to wait. In 2011, when the business was on the rise Kalinov offered Kraynov to become a partner of Aviasales. That same year an affiliate-program called Travelpayouts was founded.[4]

Aviasales has been operating abroad under the Jetradar trademark since 2012 and has been localized for 16 countries. The mobile app was launched in May of that year, and two days after the launch it took the first place in AppStore's "travelling" category, leaving behind Yandex.Taxi and Booking.com.[6]

In 2013, the company launched Hotellook, the hotel search engine.[7]

In February 2014, the service closed its first round of funding round with $10,000,000 from iTech Capital. It was called "The Deal of the Year" by Venture Award. The fund got a minority share of the company, while the fund's managing partner Gleb Davidyuk and the investment manager Ilya Balandin became Board Members of Aviasales. The investments were used to develop services, promote the product and increase the staff.[8]

In January 2016, Aviasales signed a contract with the esports team Natus Vincere and became one of the first side sponsors of eSports in Russia.[9]

In March 2017, it was reported that Go Travel Un Limited Company decided to cut 20% of jobs as well as rearrange JetRadar and Hotellook. According to the managing director Max Kraynov, this decision was the result of rising competition in the Russian market, after Priceline Group (owner of Bookig.com and Kayak) had acquired Momondo Group (Momondo and Cheapflights travel search engines).[10][11]

According to the rearrangement plan, Hotellook was supposed to become a part of Aviasales and operate under Aviasales Hotels trademark, while JetRadar was planned to become a part of Travelpayouts affiliate program.[10][11]

By bulking up the resources, the metasearch engine managed to focus on Russian and CIS markets. This decision helped to increase the revenue in the Russian market by 63%. As a result, Hotellook became a part of Travelpayouts, while Booking.com is now used to book hotels at Aviasales – the companies became strategic partners in June 2019.[12]

In 2019 Skift rated Aviasales in top 25 Travel Startups.[13]

Aviasales is a metasearch engine that does not sell tickets. When a user finds the desired ticket, they are forwarded to the airline or air ticket seller page to complete the purchase. The payment is processed at the page of an airline or air ticket seller as well as at the search engine interface. Apart from searching, the platform has the right to moderate the search results – if a provider manipulates flight prices, he's excluded from the search results.[14][15]

The mobile app was launched in May 2012, and two days after the launch it took the first place in AppStore's "travelling" category, leaving behind Yandex.Taxi and Booking.com. Aviasales launched an Android version in 2013, and later a Windows Phone version in 2014.[16][17]

In 2013 Low Price Map service was launched – it shows the cheapest tickets in different regions of the world.

In 2016 Aviasales launched a bot for Slack business messenger. The bot searches for the best offers and sends them to a user; it can be customized to send specific tickets only. The software allows to select the departure and destination point, month of travelling, duration of stay and price range. Aviasales also has bots in Telegram, Facebook and Viber.

In November 2016, the platform cooperated with JetHunter to introduce the feature allowing to search for private flight tickets.

In 2017, Aviasales was the first company in the world to offer search results of flight tickets with baggage included. At the same time the company launched a service allowing to check credibility of air ticket sellers – Настоящийбилет.рф.[18][19]

In 2018, the mobile app introduced "Events" allowing to arrange trips to concerts of favorite musicians.[20][21]

In 2020, the company introduced a service to arrange business trips – Aviasales for Business. While Aviasales for Business uses the same metasearch engine, it has some specific features to ease paperwork of legal entities. The service allows to select a convenient flight and pay for it from a deposit account, while it also provides accounting documents and customer support.[22][23]

Aviasales does not publish or announce the official data, however dedicated media do it instead.[24] According to Forbes, in 2013, the company's revenue amounted to $25 million. In 2016, the platform was ranked 16 among the most expensive companies in the Russian Internet, according to Forbes.[25] The publisher said the company's net worth was $150 million. In February 2017, the magazine published the new top list, where Aviasales climbed one position up, but the net worth of the company reduced to $99 million.[26]

On average, the platform has 15 million visitors per month, while every third iPhone in Russia is said to have Aviasales app installed on it.[26]

In 2019, Aviasales ranked 11 in top 20 "most valuable companies of the Russian Internet in 2019" published by Forbes magazine. According to experts, the net worth of the company in 2019 was $196 million.[27]

In 2020, Aviasales ranked 10 among the most valuable companies of the Russian Internet, according to Forbes the estimated net worth of the platform was $180 million.[28]

In early 2018, the company localized the platform for Kazakhstan, and one year later a third of all tickets in Kazakhstan were booked at Aviasales. Users can search tickets with prices in local currency, while the list of OTA partners is localized with respect to local specifics.[29]

In 2019, the company entered the markets of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Ukraine. The number of bookings in the new regions surged by 11 times, the company's income grew up by 40%.[30]

Travelpayouts was introduced in November 2011, it is an affiliate network promoting travel services. The workflow is the following: owners of internet resources post affiliate links for travel services and earn money for each sale led through these links. As for 2020, there are over 275,000 affiliates with 80+ advertisers including BlaBlaCar, Rentalcars, Travelata, Tutu.ru and more.[31]

In 2013, the program was rebranded as Travelpayouts. Ivan Baidin was leading the project with Artemiy Lebedev and travelling platforms like travel.ru, Redigo and My Planet among its partners. In 2015, the first airport websites became affiliates. Airbnb also joined the network of advertisers. In 2018, Travelpayouts added some new services: cruises, parkings, car rent, insurance and legal support.[32]

Aviasales is owned by Go Travel Un Limited company which was founded by Konstantin Kalinov. On 28 August 2011, Max Kraynov replaced Konstantin Kaliov as the managing director of the company, and the latter became a member of the Board of Directors and kept the position of the vice president of product.[33]

In November 2016, Konstantin Kalinov announced that he was quitting operations management of the company due to illness. In December, however he criticized shareholders and management of the company in a Facebook post, emphasizing that "Skyscanner has one more client now". According to Max Kraynov and Anton Baytsur, top managers of Aviasales, they did not have any arguments with Kalinov.[34]

On 26 December 2017, the founder of Aviasales Konstantin Kalinov died after a serious disease.[35]

The company is managed by the managing director Max Kraynov and the operational director Anton Baytsur.[8]

In February 2014, the service closed the first funding round with $10,000,000 of investments from iTech Capital fund. Soon this deal was called The Deal of the Year by Venture Award. The fund got a minority share of the company, while the fund's managing partner Gleb Davidyuk and the investment manager Ilya Balandin became Board Members of Aviasales. The company raised the investments to develop services, promote the product and increase staff.[8]

The competition in the market of flight ticket metasearch engines is very high. Aggregators offer the same product, so they have to attract users with reliable operation, additional services and user-friendly interface. The main competitor of Aviasales in Russia is Skyscanner.[36]

Another direct competitor is Yandex.Flights. However, just like Skyscanner, Aviasales offers car rent and hotel bookings along with flight tickets, while Yandex is focused on flight tickets only.[37]

In autumn 2015, Anywayanyday company made a complaint on Aviasales claiming they are allegedly violating the law by using Anywayanyday's trademark. Website anywayanyday.co registered in the national domain of Columbia was automatically redirecting users to Aviasales website. Max Kraynov reported that his company has nothing to do with this domain. The investigation was initiated, however it did not go any further. The same situation happened in 2013, when a number of services with domains similar to anywayanyday.com were automatically redirecting users to websites of different competitors.[38]