Full Video: Hopper CEO at Skift Global Forum 2022

Nobody can accuse Frederic Lalonde of going off-brand. The CEO and founder of online travel agency Hopper was, figuratively speaking, bouncing around as he talked about social commerce with moderator Dennis Schaal, Skift's founding editor and executive editor, during his interview at Skift Global Forum.

On stage, Lalonde revealed the tips and tricks the app deploys to stay sticky, keep users engaged and (most importantly) spending money. Oh, and he also likes anxiety. 

Watch the interview in its entirety, as well as read a transcript of it, below, to get a deeper understanding of how financial technology is blurring with travel retailing, and witness a CEO who's having a lot of fun with it all.

https://youtu.be/NvGupKeogzs Interview Transcript

Dennis Schaal: Hello, New York. Hello, interwebs. I hope you're going to help me with this interview because between you and me, Fred has a lot of energy and he's very enthusiastic about Hopper, shock of shocks. Thanks for being here, Fred.

Frederic Lalonde: Thanks for having me.

Schaal: So it's sort of deja vu all over again because last year we were at TWA Hotel for our conference and you were talking about a Chinese app called Pinduoduo. How do I say that?

Lalonde: I think that's right.

Dennis Schaal: Okay.

Frederic Lalonde: That's right.

Schaal: ... as the next big thing. It started out as a farmer's app to bring farm goods online, e-commerce app, they started travel. I saw, they just did, last year, 383 billion in revenue, sort of in the Amazon neighborhood. So is China and the East still the center of innovation in travel or how do you look at it?

Lalonde: I think Asia, but specifically China is the center of innovation in digital and commerce and content. I'll use TikTok as an example ... the Asian mobile ecosystem is actually innovating and completing a lot of the ideas in the west that we started to build out. And I believe that the patterns that we're seeing there are entirely applicable, and we're talking about social commerce.

Schaal: Right.

Lalonde: Let's do the same survey. I did this last year.

Schaal: Mm-hmm.

Lalonde: Raise your hand if you know what Pinduoduo is, please. Let the record show four hands. Raise your hand if you have it on your phone. Same three people. If I did that question in any conference in Asia, people would look at me like I