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Hipmunk Says Goodbye

hipmunk.com

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Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#161

Post by untog »

scottrogowski wrote: post #92

I worked for Hipmunk for a little over two years before they were purchased and have some fond memories of my time there. There have been a lot of articles on HN lately suggesting that it is better to work for a large company over a startup. Based on my time there, I would strongly disagree. I came in as a junior engineer (feral would be an appropriate term) and during my time, touched basically every part of the web…

But a lot of larger companies have great programs for junior developers that ensure they learn a lot.

In my experience and stories I've heard it seems that you can have an amazing time as a junior developer at a startup. If it's a good one. It it isn't, you'll be absolutely miserable and have no support. Similarly, you can be at a large company with a fantastic program for junior developers and learn a lot. And you can also work at an awful large company where you'll learn nothing. "Startup vs large company" feels like a false choice in many ways.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#162

Post by rb808 »

dmix wrote: post #124
seltzered_ wrote: post #57

There's a number of comments about how hipmunk declined or didn't have good prices. It reminded me of a recent Matthew Stoller piece ( https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-wave-of-terror-in-ame... ) : "Similarly, I spoke on a panel a few months ago in Congress on airlines, and Adam Goldstein, the former CEO of flight travel booking site Hipmunk, talked as well. I used to love Hipmunk, but it’s terrible now and I do…

> after the wave of consolidation among airlines during the Obama years, Ah the "too big to fail" years where everything consolidated and only got bigger including the big evil banks which took the brunt of the public's fury following the 2008 crisis (and occupy). It's funny how so much of the regulations put in place had the opposite effect and made running small firms (ie, with more liability than the big ones) bec…

> owned by opaque equity groups.

or owned by index funds, who really don't care much how management operates.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#163

Post by jessriedel »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #158
jessriedel wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything in particular you like about Google Flights over Kayak? Aesthetics, functionality, or efficiency?

I just opened Kayak for the first time in a LONG time. - I don't like the rows and rows of panels trying to get me to go to other pages or see their guides. - I want a search focused page. - I don't like how when I click search, it automatically opens up cheapoair. - I don't like how the results page starts with a modal asking me to setup a price alert.

Thanks. I basically agree with those complaints. For what it's worth Kayak will stop automatically opening up comparisons like CheapOAir if you uncheck the box once, and it seems to remember that preference. I think the price alert modal is also a one-time thing.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#164

Post by rmason »

seltzered_ wrote: post #57

There's a number of comments about how hipmunk declined or didn't have good prices. It reminded me of a recent Matthew Stoller piece ( https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-wave-of-terror-in-ame... ) : "Similarly, I spoke on a panel a few months ago in Congress on airlines, and Adam Goldstein, the former CEO of flight travel booking site Hipmunk, talked as well. I used to love Hipmunk, but it’s terrible now and I do…

I loved the design of Hipmunk and really wanted it to work. Tried it for a direct flight from Detroit to SF. I think it showed only a single flight. I then went to Delta's site and found a half dozen.

After a couple more tries on different trips I decided that whatever Hipmunk's algorithm was optimizing for just didn't work for me.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#165

Post by ada1981 »

Is there a down side to converting some of these things into open source projects?

It could be cool to turn over the domain and source to a group, let them run it and use it.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#166

Post by 0898 »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #120
dmix wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain to me what Concur does? I'm guessing it handles a bunch of the travel stuff for bigcos with lots of travelling sales people?

Everything Concur does, it does extremely poorly.

Question if anybody knows: did Concur used to be good, and then became trash after it was acquired by SAP? Or was it always clunky and hostile?

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#167

Post by dmix »

0898 wrote: post #166
inferiorhuman wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything Concur does, it does extremely poorly.

Question if anybody knows: did Concur used to be good, and then became trash after it was acquired by SAP? Or was it always clunky and hostile?

The perennial enterprise software question.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#168

Post by degenerate »

dewey wrote: post #149

I'll really miss it, the visual way of seeing how a flight is split up and how long the layovers are was better than all the other aggregators. Also with their sorting by "agony" feature was great and it was always easy to see the type of the airplane. I don't know any other aggregator who does it this well.

Google maps automatically factors in "agony" when you ask for transit directions (by design), and the "schedule explorer" gives you a visual layout of all the travel times and transfers you can use. It's very similar to the way Hipmunk displays flight information, so I never understood why Google Flights didn't adopt the schedule explorer from Google Maps...

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#169

Post by misiti3780 »

I remember Steve H. announced the launch of the company on the Tornado web server forum (backend was built with tornado). I used them a lot in the past, especially for the hotel heatmaps, which were super useful.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#170

Post by splonk »

dmix wrote: post #100
phsource wrote: post #22

This is a long time coming: for more context, Hipmunk was acquired by Concur back in 2016 for $58MM [1] as the flights meta-search business was just getting tougher and tougher As someone who's dabbled in flights bookings (BookWithMatrix) and now am working on a travel startup (Wanderlog, https://wanderlog.com , a Google Docs/Trips for travel planning), flights are just not that profitable. In North America, you'd be…

Can someone explain to me what Concur does? I'm guessing it handles a bunch of the travel stuff for bigcos with lots of travelling sales people?

Concur's a business travel platform. These differ from consumer platforms in a few ways:

1. Private negotiated rates - medium-large companies have bulk rate discounts individually negotiated with various chains that can be integrated into the search flow. 2. Policy management - rules like C-level staff can fly business class, or regular employees may fly premium economy for flights over X hours, etc. 3. Expense report integration.

These things are important enough that most large companies are willing to subject their employees to a subpar travel search experience to get this. (I work for a Concur competitor but freely admit that our search experience is also subpar compared to consumer sites).

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