Expedia Group laid off around 100 employees in a round of cuts that impacted its product and tech organization, Skift has learned.
29.09.2023 - 01:05 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal / Fred Lalonde
Hopper founder and CEO Fred Lalonde said Expedia Group’s decision to abruptly remove its hotel inventory in July was driven by competition, and claimed it was Expedia that ended up suffering.
“Expedia lost those bookings, not Hopper,” Lalonde said. Expedia Group provided perhaps half of Hopper’s hotel inventory before the breakup, and Lalonde played down the impact to his own company, adding that 65% of Hopper’s hotel inventory in North America comes from direct relationships.
The Hopper CEO’s comments came on-stage at Skift Global Forum Thursday.
Lalonde said Hopper has 13% marketshare of flights in the U.S., and that it has been taking marketshare from Expedia.
“Where did that share come from over the past four years?” Lalonde asked? Some smaller OTAs (online travel agencies) got in trouble during the pandemic, and we took the share, but the vast majority of it came from Expedia. We have a much better B2B platform, a much better a B2B product, and that’s a huge chunk of their business. So I don’t think there’s any mystery that that reaction was competitive.”
Lalonde, who served as Expedia’s vice president of hotels and packages nearly two decades ago, said he never had a conversation with Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern leading up to the split in July.
Expedia Group wouldn’t comment Thursday about Lalonde’s remarks. But a day earlier, on the same Skift Global Forum stage, Kern addressed the issue.
“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.
Kern argued that consumers have to navigate numerous misleading offers on the Hopper app before they can book a flight.
“When we looked at it, you could book a flight with us in six clicks, which is best in class,” Kern said. “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.”
Asked about the 27 clicks, Lalonde said Thursday: “I’d like to remind Peter that there’s no clicks on phones, they’re actually taps. So there’s a completely different framework here for what we do, right?”
However, that didn’t address the fact that to book something in the Hopper app one often has to navigate a series of offers along the way.
Lalonde said Hopper’s various fintech products, which enable travelers to freeze airfares or hotel rates for a certain period for a fee, provide value
Expedia Group laid off around 100 employees in a round of cuts that impacted its product and tech organization, Skift has learned.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, October 13 (Boo!). Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Starting next year, visitors to Walt Disney World will be able to «hop» from park to park with no time restrictions.
As a flock of noisy jet skiers circle the Statue of Liberty on a warm October evening, Matthew Rhys looks out at the horizon. “There’s a Welsh word, hiraeth, which is loosely translated to ‘a longing for home,’" he says. “But it's something slightly more than that. It's a longing for something that can never be again.”
Last week ended with some Hopper news, and this week was filled with it. Read below for the latest on one of the most-love consumer travel apps and its challenges and changes with partners, consumers, and more.
Fearing another Expedia-like breakup, Hopper abruptly ended its hotel partnership with Booking Holdings a week ago, Skift has exclusively learned.
You’d think the most successful online travel companies would push customers to book flights (or hotels) as fast as possible. Book the sale before the customer can get distracted or find a better deal.
Booking Holdings has viewed its planned $1.7 billion acquisition of Swedish-based company eTraveli Group as a coup in its attempts to boost its flight business. However, the European Commission has blocked the deal, arguing that the deal would increase Booking.com’s hotel market share in Europe.
Just days before announcing a reduction in its workforce, Hopper CEO Fred Lalonde joined Dennis Schaal, executive editor and founding editor of Skift, at the 10th Skift Global Forum to discuss the company’s strategic direction and profit goals.
Hopper, the fast-growing online travel and fintech company, cut 30% of its full-time staff — around 250 employees — in a bid to get profitable, according to a published report.
eTraveli Group was left at the altar last week when the European Commission blocked its acquisition by Booking Holdings on antitrust grounds. Booking is appealing, but eTraveli CEO Mathias Hedlund said the $1.8 billion deal would be “no longer in play.” “We are a bigger fish now than we were at the time,” Hedlund said in an exclusive interview with Skift, referring to when the company signed the merger deal in November 2021. He said eTraveli is 2.4 times larger than before the pandemic.
Expedia made a major move earlier this summer when it ended its relationship with online travel agency Hopper.