Hopper CEO on social commerce, sustainability and customer focus

Hopper – originally developed as an app for tracking and booking cheap flights – has now become synonymous with terms like fintech and “social commerce.” 

Fred Lalonde and Joost Ouwerkerk founded the company in 2007 and launched the app in 2015 – using the time in between to develop its massive dataset of flight prices – but since the start of the pandemic, Hopper’s trajectory has accelerated and spun out in new directions.

In March 2021, the company unveiled Hopper Cloud, it’s B2B segment that sells its infrastructure, agency content, fintech products and data science capabilities to other companies. The launch aligned with the signing of Capital One as the first customer and the financial firm’s investment of $170 million in Series F funding – which it boosted in November with an additional $96 million.

New customers include Booking Holdings’ online travel agency brand Agoda, announced earlier this week, and Nequi, a digital banking platform based in Colombia, announced in November. Hopper says Hopper Cloud now accounts for more than 40% of its total business.

Meanwhile, in the last year Hopper has built deep gamification experiences in its app and shifted its marketing spending from social media channels like Facebook and TikTok directly to consumers in the form of rewards and incentives.

In a conversation on Center Stage at The Phocuswright Conference, Lalonde explains why he believes this type of “social commerce” is what will help Hopper – now on track to sell $4.5 billion in travel and travel fintech this year – to grow even bigger than companies such as Expedia and Booking.com.

Lalonde calls Hopper’s lack of profitability its biggest weakness but explains why current priorities include investing to build its direct hotel supply, rental homes inventory and international expansion – predicting 50% of the app’s business will come from outside North America within two years.

Lalonde also touches on sustainability – with a call to action for other travel companies – and expresses regret that Hopper took “too long to become a customer-obsessed company.”

“You don’t matter, your investors don’t matter, your company doesn’t matter. What your customer needs or wants, whether they know it or not, is the only truth that matters,” he says.

Watch the full discussion below.