Uber Taps Hopper for Flights and Fintech

25.08.2023 - 13:40 / skift.com / Dara Khosrowshahi / Dennis Schaal

Uber is steadily building its travel offering — solely for UK users for now — and has entered into a partnership with online travel agency Hopper to provide it with flights and fintech products.

A small percentage of Uber’s UK rideshare customers within the next week are expected to be able to start booking domestic and international flights from within the Uber app, and the full rollout in the UK is expected to be completed by this summer.

Several of Hopper’s fintech products, including those enabling customers to freeze airfares, cancel flights for any reason, or rebook or get refunds in the event of flight disruptions, all for a fee, are expected to be available at launch.

The partnership sees Hopper forging a partnership with Uber, whose boss Dara Khosrowshahi was a longtime Expedia Group CEO. Khosrowshahi told Skift last summer that he wouldn’t be involved in making Uber’s travel partnership decisions because of a potential conflict of interest. He remains a board member of Expedia Group, which sees its mission as powering the type of business-to-business partnerships that Hopper just did with Uber.

A source familiar with discussions between Hopper and Expedia about a potential flights partnership said Expedia walked away from the discussions when it became clear that the economics would be inferior for Expedia. Hopper and Expedia already have a short-term rental partnership, with Expedia’s Vrbo providing vacation rental inventory to Hopper.

Hopper co-founder and President Dakota Smith said he sees several potential use cases for Uber’s rideshare customers to book flights within the Uber app.

Citing the fact that Uber has such a large customer base, Smith said “even if a small subset is interested in booking trips, that could be really material.” That means it may be a substantial boost to Hopper’s financial results.

Hopper already generates about 40 percent of its revenue from its third-party partnerships through Hopper Cloud and often cites Capital One Travel as its signature partner. Hopper also has fintech partnerships with Agoda and Marriott.

Still, Smith said in the long run since Uber has such a large customer base it has the potential to become a “linchpin” of Hopper Cloud.

“We’re incredibly pleased to introduce flight bookings as the latest addition to Uber’s suite of travel booking options,” said Andrew Brem, general manager at Uber UK, as part of the launch announcement Wednesday. “Perfect for business travelers and tourists alike, our new functionality will make the booking and managing of air travel simple and stress-free, with the booking process taking as little as one minute in the Uber app. Over the last 12 months with the addition of rail, coach, and now flight bookings,