by jasonwilk on 9/13/16, 9:32 PM with 116 comments
by kylecordes on 9/13/16, 10:55 PM
Unfortunately, that was then and this is now. Several of the airlines have dropped out of participating in flight comparison sites, and those that do apparently pay staggeringly little per referral. This is greatly eroded the usefulness of Hipmunk and similar sites, and taken away the motivation for anyone to pressure airlines to participate. Why bother when the most you can win is a tiny sliver?
I wish there is a way to simply pay a little money to get a comprehensive high quality comparison of all available flights from all airlines. I don't want AI, I don't want a travel agent to do it for me. I most definitely don't want to visit multiple airline websites and try to manually compare the offerings. I just want to see all of the different ways to get from point A to point B, in a well engineered graphical representation, all at once so I can quickly and effectively choose the best fit. I would love if there was a way to simply pay some dollars to do so.
by alberth on 9/13/16, 11:45 PM
Hipmunk raised $55M over 7 rounds [1] and had 51 employees [2].
by exelius on 9/14/16, 1:15 AM
The problem, of course, is the commoditization of the airline industry. Leisure travelers are, at this point, loss leaders that fill empty seats for their real business: consultants and sales people who travel 50-100+ flights a year. The industry is overly reliant on an increasingly shrinking segment of business travelers who fly on higher-fare tickets and often on short notice, so it does everything it can to make that kind of travel very painful UNLESS you do it all with a single airline and use full-fare tickets. If you thought air travel was unbearable on your last vacation, imagine how bad it is to do that 3 or 4 times a week -- so you try to consolidate to get a few perks like early boarding, lounge access or first class upgrades (nobody pays for domestic first class -- they're almost always loyalty upgrades).
So the real problem is that the airlines don't care at all about your $200 flight to Tampa to visit granny. They have to fill the seats to pay off the leases on the airplanes, but they make almost zero margin off of you because leisure travelers are so price-conscious. Business travelers are willing to pay an extra $300 for the ability to cancel their ticket on short notice, and often carry less baggage and cost less to serve. So the airlines try to lock in those types of customers with loyalty programs (which are so scaled back as to be nearly worthless unless you fly over 125 segments a year -- roughly 3 flights a week, every week of the year that's not a holiday), by making it harder to comparison shop, etc. and screw the little guys.
by nilkn on 9/13/16, 11:04 PM
by dlevine on 9/14/16, 12:23 AM
I hope that the team had a nice exit, and that they continue to develop Hipmunk within Concur.
by mmanfrin on 9/13/16, 11:32 PM
Also -- I recently used Hipmunk (been using it for a few years now), but found that it didn't find deals that Chase's rewards portal found, which I thought was terribly odd (why would a rewards portal find better deals?).
by pcurve on 9/14/16, 12:22 AM
by chx on 9/14/16, 8:57 AM
by trustfundbaby on 9/14/16, 12:21 AM
by koolba on 9/14/16, 1:58 PM
It's either that or book directly from the site if it involves doing something special (ex: award travel).
by peteretep on 9/13/16, 11:32 PM
by tiatia on 9/14/16, 8:27 AM
The craziest routing.
Instead flying for USD 700 A->Destination or A->B>Destination Fly A->C>D>E>F>G>Destination
by joeguilmette on 9/14/16, 7:46 AM
by aeijdenberg on 9/13/16, 11:34 PM
by raldi on 9/13/16, 10:39 PM
by milesward on 9/14/16, 12:21 AM
by dmoney67 on 9/13/16, 11:27 PM
by 20yrs_no_equity on 9/14/16, 1:11 AM
20 years and no equity has taught me that next time I do a start up, I want restricted stock, not options, with an exercise price of $0.01. Or founder stock. In fact, I think the only way to do a startup is a founder (unless you're just starting out.)