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Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

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Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#41
post #36

Hipmunk has been an excellent flight search tool, the best I have found as of a few years ago. Shockingly better than most of the rest of them back when it started, in terms of being able to understand and choose among numerous choices. 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 littl…

Even in 2010 when they started, air bookings didn't have enough margin to pay a decent commission. Flights gets people in the door, but you need to sell them a hotel to make money.

There's plenty of money being made in flights but it requires serious volume. Hipmunk were never able to take enough traffic away from kayak, skyscanner etc. as their only real differentiation (agony search) wasn't a big enough pull (other than for a sub section of business flyers who didn't have a travel implant to outsource the leg work to).

They also didn't put any serious energy in to markets outside the US (much less brand awareness in Europe) and were late to monetise supplementary channels like hotels and car hire.

Regardless, it's true that flight search is a tough game. Big incumbents, tight margins, crazy web of legacy madness behind the scenes (tech and business side).

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#42

Hipmunk has been an excellent flight search tool, the best I have found as of a few years ago. Shockingly better than most of the rest of them back when it started, in terms of being able to understand and choose among numerous choices. 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 littl…

Have you tried flights.google.com?

Flights.google appears to have the same problem as the rest:

* Awful, text list of flights. I want a way to visualize the options, to wisely choose from many options.

* Subset of the airlines. Google still has Delta at least, which has disappeared from Hipmunk and some others. But no Southwest.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#43
post #33

Hipmunk has been an excellent flight search tool, the best I have found as of a few years ago. Shockingly better than most of the rest of them back when it started, in terms of being able to understand and choose among numerous choices. 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 littl…

What is the incentive for airlines who don't offer bargain-basement flights to participate?

The incentive is to sell to people like me!

* In a second-tier city - no single airline has good options, but by comparing all of them I can usually find a only-mildly-lousy flight.

* Not especially price sensitive, I usually pay up to 2x the cheapest possible fare, to get a better schedule, seats, etc.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#44
post #10
post #9

Hipmunk and Google Flights are my two go-to tools these days for beginning the search for flight tickets. I use Hipmunk when I know where I want to go and when, and I use Google Flights when I know I want to take a trip, but I'm flexible about both when and where.

I haven't used Google Flights -- will check it out -- but have taken a similar approach with Skyscanner.com. Basically, if I want to filter a trip based on price without regard to location or travel date. Really fun to play with!

There are so many ways to search for cheap flights... but so few to search to good flights, across all airlines.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#45
My sincere condolences to all the option holding employees of Hipmunk who will not likely get back what they gave up in salary (due to liquidation preferences and the like, they will be lucky if they get anything, other than golden handcuffs.)

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.)

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#46
post #32

Congrats to the Hipmunk team! I've been using Hipmunk since the beginning, and have found it to be a pleasant way to search for flights. They obviously care a lot about creating a good experience for the customer, which is a lot more than I can say about the big travel sites. I hope that the team had a nice exit, and that they continue to develop Hipmunk within Concur.

Unless tech crunch got things very wrong, they didn't.

The investors will get a base hit, the employees, nothing.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#47
Concur's core product is shockingly awful. My company recently switched to it, and I don't know anyone who actually uses it. Most of us have figured out we get lower prices and less hassle by just ordering directly from the airlines / hotels and booking them to or corporate credit cards. If you're in a hurry, we can just call AmEx travel and pay $30 for them to book the trip for us using their travel agent terminals -- which of course have every flight from every airline. The end result is usually that we pay more for our travel and our company loses control; but honestly Concur's application crashes 90% of the time I try to use it with JavaScript errors, so I'm not sure it's really a viable solution in the first place.

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.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#48

Hipmunk has been an excellent flight search tool, the best I have found as of a few years ago. Shockingly better than most of the rest of them back when it started, in terms of being able to understand and choose among numerous choices. 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 littl…

This won't be possible until we update our obsolete network access laws, which make it illegal to discover facts about airline routes and rates without the consent of the airline itself.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#49

Hipmunk has been an excellent flight search tool, the best I have found as of a few years ago. Shockingly better than most of the rest of them back when it started, in terms of being able to understand and choose among numerous choices. 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 littl…

What is the best flight search these days?

I used to use Hipmunk for the graphical view, but mainly use Google flights now. It's super fast, and it is more easily viewed on my phone.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#50

Hipmunk has been an excellent flight search tool, the best I have found as of a few years ago. Shockingly better than most of the rest of them back when it started, in terms of being able to understand and choose among numerous choices. 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 littl…

What is the best flight search these days?

I've been using Kayak recently and have found it to be very good.

Relied on their price forecasting tip on one flight the other month. It advised waiting until the last few days to buy, and that paid off.

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