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Hipmunk Says Goodbye

hipmunk.com

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Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#31

Post by jedberg »

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…

> have made it into all major meta-search tools, so it's not for nothing!

Since I only use Hipmunk, which alternative would you say has the most comparable to the "agony" sort?

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#32

Post by reid »

Multiplayer wrote: post #14

I had the weirdest experience at the airport yesterday, LAX. I went to the the United ticket counter to buy a ticket for lax to nyc, same day. They told me I was better off buying online. In fact they looked completely unprepared to book a ticket. I couldn’t believe it. I checked other counters and sure enough, I was at the right place. So I tried using Hipmunk yesterday. It felt tired to me for some reason. I ended…

I tried buying a ticket same day a few months ago in SJC at the airport ticket counter. The agent would not sell me a ticket. I was told to go online.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#33

Post by jedberg »

vector_spaces wrote: post #28

One of my first technical interviews after teaching myself to code was with Hipmunk. They were incredibly nice and patient with me despite me being a clueless bundle of nerves, and I learned a lot from their very practical take home challenge, although by the time I had finished it they already hired someone. Thanks to them though I came to love working with Redis and Tornado (Python async framework). It's a fond mem…

Most of the team has already moved back to reddit. :)

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#34

Post by slg »

Anecdotally, it seemed like Hipmunk had nothing to motivate users to actually book through them. It was a great site to find what specific flight to take. The sorting by "agony" was great and I have never seen any other site have an interface as seamless as the sliders you could use to narrow down flights to specific windows of time. But once I had my preferred flight number, I booked somewhere else to get that mile bonus or whatever other incentive existed elsewhere.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#35

Post by tolmasky »

Is anyone else seeing the strange lack of spaces? Multiple words throughout the blog post show up concatenated for me, so it seems like a weird transmission bug, not one typo.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#36

Post by lojack »

Multiplayer wrote: post #14

I had the weirdest experience at the airport yesterday, LAX. I went to the the United ticket counter to buy a ticket for lax to nyc, same day. They told me I was better off buying online. In fact they looked completely unprepared to book a ticket. I couldn’t believe it. I checked other counters and sure enough, I was at the right place. So I tried using Hipmunk yesterday. It felt tired to me for some reason. I ended…

I rarely need same day flights or even short notice flights unless they're for work (in which case they would book the flight for me using their travel agent). As a result I'm flexible with the airline and travel dates and usually have months in advance to shop. Typically I'll set up alerts on Hopper as soon as I know I'll be traveling, and that will tell me the right time to buy. I'll often also look at the budget airlines sites themselves as well because I know a lot of them don't allow aggregators.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#37

Post by phsource »

jedberg wrote: post #31
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…

> have made it into all major meta-search tools, so it's not for nothing! Since I only use Hipmunk, which alternative would you say has the most comparable to the "agony" sort?

The interesting thing is the "Agony" sort has almost become standard! Skyscanner, Momondo, and others all default to a "Best" sort that takes into account flight length and prices.

Google Flights also does this for the first few results it returns, before returning a bunch of flights in price sort order.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#38

Post by nathancahill »

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…

Oh no kidding, you're BookWithMatrix? Shooting you an email, your website has been life-changing.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#39

Post by jalopy »

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…

Just took a quick look at Wanderlog and it looks awesome - exactly what I want out of a trip planning tool.

Great job!

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#40

Post by tempsy »

jba wrote: post #4

Bah, not a huge surprise given how brutal the travel tech industry is, but they remained my fav travel site - seemed to often find fares that were missing off google flights or other competitors. Loved the U/I too. RIP.

Define "brutal"

Booking has made money off travel hand over fist this past decade. It's highly competitive, sure, but for a reason since hotels pay massive premiums to these websites to drive sales.

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