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Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

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Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#101

Post by exelius »

tiatia wrote: post #85
kylecordes wrote: post #4

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…

I never became a fan of Hipmuk but may check them out again. I use: 1. Expedia. Recently had a problem that they never issued me an eticket. Had to confirm with the airline directly that I actually have a ticket! 2. Vayama. Really like them. Good tool. Can be time consuming to change a ticket. 3.Book directly at airline. God idea, especially considering the problems laid out at #2. Not. Never book a ticket in a 3rd w…

> 3.Book directly at airline. God idea, especially considering the problems laid out at #2. Not. Never book a ticket in a 3rd world country directly at the airline. I learned it the hard way!

Unless it's a global airline (British Airways, Air France, KLM, Emirates, etc.) always book with an airline in your native country via codeshare. At least that way, you have some recourse via normal consumer protection measures in the event things go wrong.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#102

Post by dexterdog »

benjaminRRR wrote: post #74
alberth wrote: post #17

Anyone have insight into the sale price? Hipmunk raised $55M over 7 rounds [1] and had 51 employees [2]. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hipmunk#/entity [2] https://www.hipmunk.com/about

My guess is that, given it has not been disclosed, the investors got as much of their money back as they could through liquidation preferences and there's not much to get excited about after that.

The employees are probably (mostly) getting to keep their jobs.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#103

Post by dboreham »

cookiecaper wrote: post #48
kylecordes wrote: post #4

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.

Note that they may not even be a "rate" to disclose in that the airline may be inventing ticket prices using algorithms in real-time. In that case to build a ticket search engine you need to either reproduce those algorithms or have the airline perform part of your search.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#104

Post by exelius »

chrismcb wrote: post #77
neptunespear wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This sounds like something for the Justice Department to get involved in.

Why? Why do You think the justice department needs to get involved? This is a place where capital am actually works. If people only use aggregators then airlines not listed won't get much business. I actually check swa because swa us the online airline that doesn't charge bag fees. So I go out of my way to give them business when I can.

Honestly the price of an SWA flight is usually more expensive than another airline plus bag fees. Plus most airlines will waive the bag fees if you sign up for their credit card (you don't even have to use it).

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#105

Post by dboreham »

tiatia wrote: post #91

A flight search engine that I would be interested in: The craziest routing. Instead flying for USD 700 A->Destination or A->B>Destination Fly A->C>D>E>F>G>Destination

Airlines typically don't allow that (unless you buy one-way segments between those nodes).

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#106

Post by bane »

kylecordes wrote: post #4

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…

I'd also like more information about the flight: quality, seat comfort, meal included (or pay for on the flight), meal rating, flight entertainment (in seat, group, none), cleanliness, etc.

I'd be willing to pay a little more, if the flight wasn't like being in a metal torture container or the cleanliness levels were so poor that I get to my destination with an immediate illness. But right now I can only see that some flights are more expensive than others and no idea why. And I have to go off of my average experience with an airline to guess if the flight will be pleasant or miserable (except for United domestic, that's always miserable).

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#107

Post by awesomerobot »

raldi wrote: post #55
function_seven wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding this to my private list of reasons whenever someone scoffs at "paying $25k a year for a pair of LCDs and a cheap keyboard". Thanks.

Yeah you can be on the phone with the company travel department telling you the United flight at 10:13 doesn't fly between Dulles and New York on Tuesdays, and quickly type FLY IAD NYC and you'll see a line like 12. UA 456 10:13 IAD 11:35 LGA vvvv vv (Where the v's are checkmarks in day-of-week columns; so you know it flies every day but Thurs) Then you type 12 and get all the details. It all happened as fast as you…

Curious if anyone knows: is the Bloomberg terminal interfacing directly with one of the major CRS systems like Amadeus?

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#108

Post by koolba »

Hipmunk was cool when it first came out but I haven't used anything besides Google flight search in years. The speed of the interface alone justifies it.

It's either that or book directly from the site if it involves doing something special (ex: award travel).

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#109

Post by mbesto »

wxs wrote: post #23
blahshaw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Flights is simply a pretty UI around matrix.itasoftware.com, no?

The matrix has nice features like flexible dates on a multi-leg trip that Google Flights doesn't offer.

Google Flights has gradually added ITA Matrix stuff over time.

Re: Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur

#110

Post by underyx »

ropiku wrote: post #95
underyx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad you asked. We do: https://www.kiwi.com/us/content/guarantee Apparently the rewrite of this dry wall of text is not live yet, so let me paraphrase: You contact us and we book you the flight that gets you to your destination the earliest (if needed we pay for a taxi or bus or anything to get you to another airport if needed.)

> In the case that we are unable to find a reasonable alternative flight(s) or other means of transportation, due to a disproportionate price difference between the potential alternative transportation and the original price for the unused flights, we may agree with you on our proportional contribution to the costs associated with a mutually agreed upon alternative transportation. This doesn't sound like a 100% guara…

Alright, this following comment is not an official communication by Kiwi.com, it reflects solely my personal guesses/opinions.

I'm not sure about the details since I don't have much to do with the legal side of things, but I would assume that Kiwi.com had to put this clause in to avoid having to pay when a flight's price is 1000x higher than it should be as an error fare, or similar cases. I've personally never heard of a case where expenses weren't fully covered because of this clause.

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