Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#2Drop the social bit. Bold the colleagues part.
Once every two years I might book a trip with friends and it's not a big deal. Six times a year I am going to conferences with workers and it's extremely painful doing the coordination. We always end up at different hotels and flights and all that.
The only way I would remember this site is if I had to use it somewhat frequently, and the only way I'll ever use it frequently is if it helps me coordinate work travel.
The social part just sounds... 'icky'. Like you don't have a good product so you have to throw in an old buzz term.
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#3Love the concept. There is definitely a need for social travel planning. Love that you guys use pyramid and backbone btw ;)
I guess my only criticism is on my initial experience. It feels like a better expedia, nothing more.
The core value of your site is that it lets people plan their trip together. But that's not the impression I am getting when I start using it. Maybe the first step should be: Where are you planning your trip? What for? and Hopon would create a unique URL for my trip and everything I do from there gets saved at that URL. Maybe I can customize that page too, create a Facebook private event (with my hopon trip URL linked on that fb page somehow). Then from there, I can invite friends, etc. Get the idea?
I tried the web version, maybe the ios version is different. Hope this helps!
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#4Drop the social bit. Bold the colleagues part. Once every two years I might book a trip with friends and it's not a big deal. Six times a year I am going to conferences with workers and it's extremely painful doing the coordination. We always end up at different hotels and flights and all that. The only way I would remember this site is if I had to use it somewhat frequently, and the only way I'll ever use it frequen…
Yep - "social travel" has earned a bad reputation because previous companies haven't delivered on the promise of being able to easily book travel with friends and colleagues. We've spent the last year and a half building the tool we wish existed for our own personal and work trips - and think we're delivering the goods. Check it out and tell us what we could be doing better!
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#5Social/group travel booking services like these have always interested me, and this one in particular looks really slick, but they all suffer from the same, major, challenges: customer acquisition costs and timing.
First, potential customers need to find you. And you're competing against big players running national TV ads (if I see that Trivago guy one more time...) and whose addressable market – not to mention resources/revenue – is larger than yours (i.e., their market is Anyone Who Travels as opposed to Those Who Travel in Groups).
Second, even if you are the kind of person who travels with friends somewhat regularly, you're doing it, what, maybe two times a year, three max? Not only do you have to get in front of potential users' faces, you have to do it exactly at the moment (of which you have three) they need you, and once those precious few moments have passed, you've likely lost them. (Or you have to spend a crapton of money to advertise constantly. See above.)
The way to make this a success IMHO is to target businesses. Forget consumers for now. It is really really hard to change behavior one person at a time. It's slightly easier (different kind of challenge) to sell this to the enterprise as a way of driving corporate compliance, where the benefits are clear: (policy compliance + cost savings + simplified booking process) * many trips a year.
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#6Social/group travel booking services like these have always interested me, and this one in particular looks really slick, but they all suffer from the same, major, challenges: customer acquisition costs and timing. First, potential customers need to find you. And you're competing against big players running national TV ads (if I see that Trivago guy one more time...) and whose addressable market – not to mention reso…
While what we've built works great for consumer groups, it goes way beyond that. We've also built:
* Small/medium business features (https://www.hopon.com/why/business)
* Features for recurring solo trips (https://www.hopon.com/why/recurring)
* The ability to share past trips with friends/colleagues for easy copying (https://www.hopon.com/why/vacation)
Give it a shot and let me know what you think!
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#7This is one of those rare occasions where the UI looks so good that I feel compelled to organize a trip for my family now. For personal and family trips, the only thing that might prevent me from using it would be the prices for flights. As long as they're comparable to Orbitz, Kayak, etc, I'd much rather book through your app. And as long as you provided clean itineraries and receipts, it seems like a no-brainer for corporate travel.
Are there plans for an Android app?
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#8This is one of those rare occasions where the UI looks so good that I feel compelled to organize a trip for my family now. For personal and family trips, the only thing that might prevent me from using it would be the prices for flights. As long as they're comparable to Orbitz, Kayak, etc, I'd much rather book through your app. And as long as you provided clean itineraries and receipts, it seems like a no-brainer for…
Thanks for the comment!
We are plugged into exactly the same systems for flight booking that Expedia, Orbitz, etc use for flights, so our prices are identical in 95%+ of the cases.
Yes - we're planning an Android app, but for now we have a (we think) very responsive and feature-complete mobile web app, in addition to the iOS app and desktop site.
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#9This is one of those rare occasions where the UI looks so good that I feel compelled to organize a trip for my family now. For personal and family trips, the only thing that might prevent me from using it would be the prices for flights. As long as they're comparable to Orbitz, Kayak, etc, I'd much rather book through your app. And as long as you provided clean itineraries and receipts, it seems like a no-brainer for…
Thanks for the comment! We are plugged into exactly the same systems for flight booking that Expedia, Orbitz, etc use for flights, so our prices are identical in 95%+ of the cases. Yes - we're planning an Android app, but for now we have a (we think) very responsive and feature-complete mobile web app, in addition to the iOS app and desktop site.
Some feedback: the way you invite and share with others via the web interface does not feel that intuitive. For example, I'm having a hard time understanding when and how you split hotel costs with other users. Also, it would be really nice to get an idea of how much the trip will cost in total per person on the trip page.
I'd also echo the suggestion made by the other commenter about having a dedicated page for each trip rather than having to add an itinerary to your own list of trips each time. That page could be more easily shared and could break down costs for each section.
Re: Show HN: HopOn – Simple and Social Way to Book Travel
#10Looks pretty great!
My experience: installed it but couldn't figure out how to import existing itineraries, and nothing at https://hopon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us, so uninstalled after a few mins.
Best of luck!