Hopper cuts 250 jobs, citing push to full-scale travel platform

Hopper announced 250 job cuts this week that the online travel services company attributed to “organizational changes” as it evolves into a full-scale travel platform.

In a statement confirming the job losses, the company pointed to efforts to grow beyond its roots as a mobile travel app known for predicting the best time to book flights.

“This year, we prioritized the company's evolution into a full-scale travel platform, powering both the Hopper app and our B2B partner channels,” the statement said. “In recent months, the growth of our B2B business has accelerated rapidly. In parallel, we are laser-focused on continuing to build our direct global hotel supply. We needed to make organizational changes to properly support these two critical business objectives. Unfortunately, we made the difficult decision to eliminate a number of roles as part of this reorganization. We are deeply grateful to the colleagues we had to part with for their hard work and dedication.”

Hopper’s announcement follows job cuts from other online travel agencies this year. Social media posts by former employees in July prompted Expedia Group to confirm an unspecified number of layoffs. Tripadvisor announced layoffs in August.

In an interview with Canada’s Globe and Mail, CEO Fred Lalonde said Hopper's cuts — equal to 30% of the company’s full-time staff — were part of the Montreal-based company’s effort to reach profitability.

“We were running a lot of initiatives that were not revenue-generating, we’ve always done that,” Lalonde said. “But the world has changed, money is no longer free. And we need to move to profitability. There is no magical secret to why we’re doing this, it’s to cut our burn rate and arrive to break even as fast as possible.”

Partnerships have played a big role in what Hopper called its evolution.

In 2021 credit card company Capital One led Hopper’s Series F fundraising round of $170 million and a year later invested another $96 million in extending the partnership. Under the deal, Capital One Travel customers use Hopper Cloud for features such as price alerts, price drop protection and the ability to cancel a flight for any reason.

Those and other ancillary products drew fire from Expedia Group, which announced in July it was pulling its hotel and vacation rental supply from Hopper, charging the rival OTA with taking advantage of consumers. In a statement, the company said Hopper’s features “exploit consumer anxiety and confuse customers, leading them to purchase services they neither need nor fully understand.” A statement from Hopper at the time said Expedia Group’s decision was a sign it “clearly views Hopper as a significant competitive threat.”

Hopper has partnered this year with Brazil’s fintech giant Nubank and Australia’s CommBank on deals that feature Hopper’s price prediction and protection products. Last month Hopper announced partnerships with Hotelbeds and WebBeds, bringing its hotel supply to millions of properties, the company said.