Expedia CEO Talks Hopper Breakup, One Key Loyalty

27.09.2023 - 18:21 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal / Peter Kern / Justin Dawes

Expedia Group caused a stir this summer when it cut ties with the growing online travel app Hopper.  Peter Kern, Expedia’s CEO, stood by the decision onstage Wednesday at the Skift Global Forum during a session moderated by Skift executive editor Dennis Schaal. Expedia Group owns brands including Expedia.com, Vrbo, Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Orbitz.

“When we looked hard at the Hopper product, we felt like it was creating a bad consumer experience that was pushing customers to buy things they either didn’t need or fully understand. And we didn’t want our partners’ products represented in their marketplace,” Kern said.

Expedia had been supplying Hopper with hotel and vacation rental inventory, part of the travel giant’s growing business-to-business service. 

Hopper has set itself apart in the industry with paid InsurTech products for consumers, such as one that it says allows them to cancel for any reason. When booking on Hopper, those services are offered as pop-ups multiple times before a consumer can finalize a booking.

As Skift covered exclusively in July, Expedia said the cut was made because it believed that Hopper has features that “exploit consumer anxiety and confuse customers.”

Kern gave an example during the forum: “When we looked at it, you could book a flight with us in six clicks, which is best in class. On Hopper, it was 27 clicks. Now, you can all decide whether you like that or don’t like that, or decide what you think they sell is good or bad. That’s up to everybody else. We made our decision, which was that we didn’t think it was consistent with how we want consumers to experience our products or our partners’ products.” 

Hopper said at the time that Expedia made the move with an “anti-competitive” motivation. 

Kern said Wednesday that the split is part of a normal process Exedia takes as it’s been growing its base of business customers, and Hopper has evolved a lot since the partnership was initially formed. 

“We’re very consistent about this,” Kern said. “We have turned off a few partners here and there over time, for a variety of reasons that often have to do with abuse of rates, or sales practices, many times encouraged by our supply partners who don’t Unlike what is happening, or what’s happening at their hotels, when people show up with those prices from those places

Frederic Lalonde, the CEO of Hopper, will speak onstage at the Skift Global Forum on Thursday morning in a one-on-one session moderated by Schaal.

Expedia officially launched its One Key loyalty program in July, which allows consumers to earn and use points across the company’s portfolio of brands. 

It was the culmination of three years of technological work, Kern said.

He said that 70 million people have been