Hopper’s Disruption of the Legacy Travel Industry: New Skift Research

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.

In this report, we take a deeper look into how exactly Hopper differentiates itself from competitors and what has fueled its tremendous growth. Based on our conversations with senior executives, we have also estimated Hopper’s key financial and performance indicators, such as total gross bookings, revenue and marketing spend, as well as modeling its future growth trajectory. Hopper is a private company and much of the data and analysis presented in this report is not publicly available, nor has it been published in such detail before – making this a truly differentiated piece of work.

What You’ll Learn From the Report:

• The evolution of Hopper’s business strategy and how that has influenced top-line growth and market share gains
• Hopper’s key metrics such as gross bookings, revenue, take rate and segment mix, as estimated by Skift Research
• Hopper’s key growth drivers, such as the launch of its fintech products and Hopper Cloud (its B2B arm)
• Skift Research’s projections for Hopper’s growth trajectory
• Hopper’s unique user acquisition and marketing strategy within the travel industry, specifically its vision of utilizing social commerce as inspired by Chinese app Pinduoduo

This is the latest in a series of reports and data products that Skift Research puts out to help you analyze the biggest trends in the travel industry. Tap into the opinions and insights of our seasoned network of staffers and contributors. More than 200 hours of desk research, data collection, and/or analysis goes into each report.

By subscribing to Skift Research, you will gain access to our entire vault of reports conducted on topics ranging from technology to marketing strategy to deep dives on key travel brands. You will also be able to access our proprietary Skift Travel Health Index, Skift Travel Company Tracker, Hotel Tech Benchmark, and data from our regular traveler survey.

Hopper’s Rise in Travel 2023

Hopper is the new kid on the block. Except it’s not. Founded in 2007, it spent a decade building a huge database of flight information before selling its first flight booking in 2016. The time it spent on its cutting edge price prediction capabilities have paid dividends, leading to the launch of a suite of fintech products which have been fundamental in Hopper’s disruption of the legacy OTAs.

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