Hopper Raises $100 Million More for Airfare and Hotel Rate Prediction
Skift Take
Hopper's survival is a testament to the perseverance of its founders, though it's an understatement to say it takes them a long time to scale their products up. The startup is also now overpriced, based on its funding, for most potential acquirers — except maybe for Airbnb.
No startup has used airfare prediction to build a consumer brand and build an online travel agency to the same degree as Hopper, a mobile-only startup.
On Wednesday, Hopper said it had raised a Series D round of funding of $100 million. Omers, the venture capital arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, led the round.
Citibank is a strategic investor in this round, too, with an aim of helping in payments integration and advising on the company's internationalization.
The new investment values the business at about $750 million, reported Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source.
The company will use most of the funding for international expansion. It aims to build its access to direct inventory for both airfares and hotels, and that requires having market managers in place in many countries.
Hopper has more 200 employees, mainly in Montréal and Cambridge, Massachusetts. It plans to double that headcount by the end of next year.
A Stretch of a Marketing Claim
Making predictions is hard, especially about the future, according to a comical Dutch proverb.
Some skeptics doubt something as complex as airfares can be predicted with 95 percent accuracy to the dollar. What's more, airlines would presumably stop working with any agency if it were truly eliminating excess margin by eliminating the arbitrage in shifting fares.
The press likes to simplify Hopp
