FinTech tips

Two months after Expedia Group abruptly stopped providing Hopper with hotels and vacation rentals, Hopper announced Wednesday that it struck deals with two hotel bedbanks — Hotelbeds and WebBeds — to add more than 700,000 properties to its roster.

You finally found the perfect hotel for your upcoming trip. You check the total in U.S. dollars and input your credit card information. Booked. Easy, right?

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.

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.

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.

Capital One, which led a $170 million investment round in travel app Hopper in 2021, has added $96 million to the kitty, and the companies announced a long-term partnership between Hopper and Capital One Travel.

Travel technology company Amadeus said it was making a “significant investment” by setting up a wholly-owned business called Outpayce, which will focus on “delivering a smooth and connected travel payment experience across the traveler journey and accelerating the pace of fintech innovation in travel.”

Malaysia’s Capital A has submitted plans for a corporate restructuring, which will involve the merger of its low-cost airline AirAsia with long-haul carrier AirAsia X.

Travelers booking flights and hotels from Expedia in a co-branded feature in the Afterpay app can now choose to pay in four interest-free payments over six weeks, Expedia announced.

Big banks are making a bold statement in travel and will increasingly become the first place — at the top of the proverbial trip-planning funnel — where customers look to book their trips.

Two tech startups involved in the travel industry raised $15.3 million this week.

Mondee is scooping up Brazilian online travel marketplace Orinter for $40 million, its first acquisition since going public last year, the company said Wednesday.

Financial services company Brex is relaunching its travel booking platform after swapping agency partners.

There are a number of innovative features that set Hopper apart from other online travel agencies. 

Skift Research has gained unprecedented access to one of the fastest growing online travel agencies (OTAs) in North America – Hopper. We interviewed senior executives across each of Hopper’s verticals, in addition to their co-founder and their CFO, to produce a deep dive analysis of Hopper’s rise in travel. Since being founded in 2007, Hopper has become a formidable disruptor of the OTA market, which for so long has been dominated by the duopoly of the legacy players. It has leveraged big data, machine learning algorithms and predictive analysis to launch an array of unique fintech products that have been fundamental in helping it become the third largest OTA in North America.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Monday, June 12. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Trendy Buy Now, Pay Later offerings often mean travelers pile up debt and pay high interest rates to fund their vacations, but online travel agency CheapOair began promoting savings accounts with cash rewards as an alternative.

I spent last week at two major hotel conferences, and the most intriguing thing I heard was a couple of hotel executives contemplating the coming competition from financial and tech players.

Expedia Group, which has supplied rival Hopper with hotel and vacation rental inventory for several years, terminated the relationship Wednesday over a variety of practices that Expedia believes are anti-consumer, Skift learned exclusively.

The UK-based fintech app Revolut, which claims 30 million users, has added a in-app experiences marketplace, in partnership with Tripadvisor’s Viator.