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Hopper, a mobile-only travel startup that has raised $78 million, begins to expand beyond airfare predictions and flight bookings to offer consumers hotel rate predictions and room bookings — beginning with New York City. Since the company launched its apps, consumers have downloaded them 17 million times, the startup said. Hopper says it is on track to process $500 million in gross bookings in 2017. That’s roughly triple the pace of the year before, the company said, but it is only a sliver of the $72 billion that Expedia processed in gross bookings last year. Hopper CEO Lalonde said that consumers book flights on its app an average of 140 days in advance of departure. About a fifth of purchases are driven by recommendations made by artificial intelligence-based suggestion software, the company claimed. The company is hoping to further increase monthly engagement by adding hotel bookings and rate predictions. Flight itineraries for tickets booked through the app average eight days, so potentially there is a lot of incremental hotel spending to attach to airplane ticket sales. Hopper will making predictions on how individual property rates may go up or down. Read original article |
