Hipmunk Says Goodbye • Hacker News Board

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#341

Post by MattSayar » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

fergie wrote: post #317

neonate wrote: post #244

It doesn't seem to be mentioned in this thread yet that the founders tried to buy it back: https://skift.com/2020/01/14/hipmunk-co-founders-spurned-by-...

"SAP Concur refused the offer. It intends to shutter both the Hipmunk consumer brand and the Concur Hipmunk business travel incarnation on January 23." Do Sap Concur stand to gain by closing Hipmunk down? Why would they not take money for something they were going to destroy anyway?

The article mentions that it'd be embarrassing for SAP if they managed to make Hipmunk more successful than they could.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#342

Post by 9BillionMistake » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

schimmy_changa wrote: post #275

kick wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. It's a flight-booking company. If Kayak or something got closed, it'd be deemed off-topic for HN. Kayak and Hipmunk do virtually the same thing. The difference? One was by a YC founder, the other has T.V. commercials.

I disagree - it was a really great product, something to be emulated. When it came out, there was nothing like it, and it truly felt like a step change compared to the existing sites. It was not quite the same impact, but felt like a shadow of the feeling when you first used Google instead of Altavista. One thing the HN community values is really good, well-executed products, and it's instructive to learn what killed…

it was a really great product,

That is a crazy thing to say.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#343

Post by majani » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #88

johnhess wrote: post #51

This is a shame, and says more about the consolidation of the tech industry than Hipmunk's product. One of Hipmunk's founders spoke to a course that I was in about their experience as a founder and how they were running their business. A few weeks later, a well known founder of another travel search company visited the class and said outright that if Hipmunk did have any success, that they would copy those features a…

That strategy only works so far. Keep adding and things get bloated. Servicing a narrow use-case can cause them problems with coping.

Facebook, WeChat and Office are counterpoints.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#344

Post by st1ck » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

why-oh-why wrote: post #119

Something that’s hard for me to find is a website that gets me from point A to point B without caring about stop count and duration. Is the flight cheap and stops 23 hours in Hong Kong and 20 hours in Kuala Lumpur? I’ll take it. Also Kiwi and Google Flights let you make wide searches but their efficiency drops so low they’re basically useless in my experience. You’re better off searching day by day. Hipmunk never ret…

ITA matrix [1] shows prices calendar within 1 month for RT or OW, and for multicity it allows ±2 days for each leg.

Although it doesn't always return the best results if it has to go through thousands of routes (e.g. you specify many origin & destination airports and don't restrict by airline).

[1] https://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#345

Post by st1ck » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #235

jessriedel wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faster at populating the date grid? Or just a snappier UI in general?

Google Flights immediately populates the date grid with price estimates after you pick a date. I have yet to see a competitor that has this feature.

But those are estimates and not the final prices displayed after you pick the date. If you specifically want the cheapest date, the grid is barely useful. ITA matrix usually does a better job.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#346

Post by st1ck » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 3:31 AM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #70

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'm a bit confused. You'd go to the United ticket counter in person but then don't go to united.com when asked to book online? May I ask why that wasn't your first choice for this particular incident?

It'd also make sense if their phone got broken unexpectedly.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#347

Post by bbarn » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #331

bbarn wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at what happened to Virgin America? It was a consumer-focused airline that was doing very well financially, and it was forcibly acquired because of regulations that US airlines must be US owned.

Nope. That was a problem early on for Virgin America. But Branson was quite explicit: consolidation was the problem: https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/virgin-america

Yeah, read the article. He was against the merger - regulation drove the forced consolidation, which he did not want. He posted about it a ton when it happened.