Kayak co-founder and CEO Steve Hafner, who took the company public in 2012 and sold it to Booking Holdings for $2.1 billion the next year, is out as CEO after 22 years.
Parent company Booking Holdings announced Tuesday morning that it appointed chief financial officer Peer Bueller as Kayak CEO, and Hafner has become executive chair, a newly created position.
The announcement did not give a reason for the leadership shuffle, but said Hafner “will take on a new leadership role at Booking Holdings focused on advancing AI innovation.” The company provided no further details on the new role.
Bueller became Kayak CFO in 2016 and added chief operating officer to his duties in 2021. From 2012 to 2016, Bueller served as director of financial planning and analysis at the parent company’s flagship brand, Booking.com.
In addition to his Kayak CEO role, Hafner served as the CEO of sister brand OpenTable from January 2018 to August 2020.
Skift broke the news last month that Hafner had previously sought to take Kayak private, and had investors lined up to execute the move. Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel rejected the idea, according to our scoop.
Hafner and chief technology officer Paul English co-founded Kayak in 2004, and it became one of the leading companies in what was then a hot category, travel metasearch. Skyscanner, Trivago, and Tripadvisor were also top players.
Leading OTAs reasoned they needed to own a metasearch company to use as an in-house platform to market their own brands, and to make money off rivals’ advertising spend. Booking Holdings acquired Kayak in 2013, Expedia Group took a controlling interest in Trivago that same year, and China’s Trip.com Group scooped up Skyscanner in 2016.
Expedia and Hotels.com are among many non-Booking Holdings brands that advertise on Kayak today.
Google — with its grip on search, and the dominance of its hotel and flight metasearch products — overtook Kayak and others in the metasearch group.
The rise of generative AI and large language models such as Google Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Anthropic’s Claude, has reduced the perceived value of metasearch platforms.
In October 2025, Booking Holdings took a $457 million writedown on the value of Kayak. Booking stated that it expected lower future cash flows for Kayak and higher customer acquisition costs.
At the time, Hafner attributed the impairment largely to changes in Google’s search practices — including the rise of AI Overviews and a shift in visibility from free (organic) links to paid listings.
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