Review of 2021: New partnerships tripled – Kiwi.com

2021 brought many positives for Kiwi.com’s business relationships  –  forming new industry partnerships and supporting travel organizations 

The year 2021 was, for many businesses, focused on overcoming challenges and learning how to live with the ongoing impacts of the pandemic. Kiwi.com took a lead in getting travel back on track– the travel tech company strengthened its B2B partnerships and actively participated in new cooperations, bringing better travel offers and opportunities for the customer, ​​as they sought a new approach to aid their recovery following the impacts of the pandemic.

Kiwi.com cooperated with a number of well-known brands, including ride-hailing and employee benefit initiatives, establishing brand partnerships beneficial for both parties. Demand for self-connecting itineraries continued with more airports looking to increase traffic and partner with Kiwi.com to harness this trend. Additionally, tourism boards acknowledged missed opportunities to promote their destinations and cooperated with Kiwi.com where they were supported with destination brand awareness and travel discounts on top.

Airports

The airport supporting Virtual Interlining itineraries can become a self-styled virtual hub, by providing connections that are not managed by an airline or a group of airlines but created directly by passengers or by platforms such as Kiwi.com that build those unique self-connecting itineraries for their customers. This way, travelers get many more options to reach their final destination, while airports support transferring passengers and benefit from increased traffic.

During 2021 ten new airports chose to partner with Kiwi.com and support self-connecting passengers, including Prague, Brussels South Charleroi, and Dortmund airports. Partner airports activated services such as Smart Pass and Fast Track to enhance the transfer customer experience, plus benefited from Kiwi.com Search and Book data insights.

Some have introduced widgets and white labels implemented on their websites, offering a direct option to search for the preferred destination from the given airport and book straight away through the Kiwi.com booking page. Additionally, the company cooperated with the airport operator, VINCI Airport group, to facilitate a smoother transfer for self-connected passengers.

Destinations 

In 2021 Kiwi.com actively started to support Tourism Boards and Destination Management Organizations by working with them to bring travelers back to their destinations, running marketing campaigns, destination awareness and promotions to inspire travelers. The opportunity to encourage bookings directly by implementing a widget or white label on their website is also available to Tourism Boards, giving a direct link to the Search and Book pages of Kiwi.com.

Since making this service available last year, Kiwi.com has partnered with five Destination Management Organizations, one of them being Visit Portugal. The partnership involved a marketing campaign promoting the destination to Kiwi.com customers in the monthly newsletter and on the main Kiwi.com Search pages. The activity also involved special promotions offering Kiwi.com customers a reduced price for trips to Portugal, including certain airlines and routes.

Brand Partnerships

2021 saw Kiwi.com strengthening its brand in local markets, with a promotional partnership involving gamification with Uber in Poland and Romania bringing over 7 million impressions and thousands of new subscribers. The joint effort resulted in mutual brand promotion on both Kiwi.com and Uber platforms. Kiwi.com also became a provider of travel as an employee benefit with specialists in this field, Sodexo and eHotel.cz, in the Czech Republic.

Affiliates

To date, Kiwi.com has over 620 active affiliate partners including travel providers, travel bloggers, and travel photographers who create inspiring travel content and promote links to Kiwi.com Search and Book pages. In 2021 Kiwi.com reactivated cooperation with Urlaubstracker in the German market offering website users regular Kiwi.com flight deals. The company also cooperated with a discount coupons website Capital One Shopping in the US and a shopping rewards provider Global Savings Group in the UK market.

Travel Retailers

In 2021 Kiwi.com’s platform for partners, Tequila, saw triple the number of registrations compared to 2020 with over 16,500 new accounts being created. In total, Kiwi.com has 26,000 partners connected through Tequila and benefiting from easy to set up travel solutions available in the platform, one of them being Search & Book API integration.

A new partner using the Kiwi.com API in 2021 is Travala.com – the first Online Travel Agency simplifying the use of cryptocurrency in the travel segment. Travala.com is bringing its customers access to flight and route choices with more than 600 airlines around the world thanks to Kiwi.com and it enables travelers to book flights with bitcoin and 60+ other cryptocurrencies.

Another partner Kiwi.com is proud to cooperate with and was strengthened in 2021 is airasia SuperApp, a comprehensive lifestyle platform, connecting people to places, and people to people. Complementing the travel products, shopping, food, and rewards offered at airasia SuperApp, Kiwi.com powers the database providing flights to over 3,000 destinations worldwide.

Content Acquisition

In 2021 the company acquired 30 new content acquisition partners covering all continents worldwide. These partners support Kiwi.com in building its vast travel database with self-connect combinations.

In March, Sabre, a leading software and technology provider powering the global travel industry, became a new content partner of Kiwi.com. Through these content acquisition partnerships, in 2021, Kiwi.com saw the highest ever volume of travel content in its database, bringing more relevant and better itinerary choices to its customers.

Would you like to become the next partner of Kiwi.com and make travel better? Don’t hesitate to fill in the contact form below, and the dedicated team will reach out to you to find the best possible solution for your business.