Dive Brief:

• Kayak launched an emoji-based search functionality that pairs specific emojis with 10 cities around the world, including New York, Las Vegas, Chicago and Tokyo, per Business Insider. For example, to search for flight and hotel deals in New York, Kayak users can input an emoji version of the Statue of Liberty.
• The new search function is available on desktop and mobile devices as well as Kayak's Facebook Messenger bot and is being promoted on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter with paid and organic media. Kayak rolled out the new functionality because emojis are part of mainstream communication and the site is "always trying to make travel easier for our consumers," David Solomito, VP of brand marketing, Kayak North America, told Business Insider.
• Kayak is looking to expand emoji-based searches to more cities and has enlisted its audience for help through an online vote that asks visitors to pair 16 additional emojis with destinations worldwide. Business Insider cited data from Swyft Media that found more than 6 billion emojis are sent across mobile devices each day; 86% of smartphone users in the U.S. regularly use emojis, per a MoJiLaLa study.

Dive Insight:

Emojis, digital stickers and their ilk continue to become more appealing to brands, especially as the popularity of messaging apps grows with key demographic groups like Gen Z and millennials. Kayak clearly sees the value in integrating emojis into its larger business — travel search — as it is running an entire paid and organic marketing campaign promoting the service, along with pushing promotions out on channels like Facebook Messenger. 

Beyond potentially being fun for users to play around with, emoji-based search might make certain functions simpler and more convenient on Kayak. For particular brands, it might also open up a marketing opportunity. A hotel chain could presumably create an emoji of its logo that's searchable to find and book locations either nearby or relevant to the user.  

Kayak isn't alone in eyeing expansion into the emoji space: In October last year, GoDaddy launched a search engine for emoji domain names, helping brands to own domains around certain campaigns.