Hopper cuts 30% of staff

The company is continuing to invest in fast-growing areas of its business including expanding lodging offering

The company said it was running many initiatives that were not revenue-generating in the past, but as financial resources are no longer unlimited it recognizes the importance of achieving profitability and aims to reduce its expenditure quickly to reach a break-even point at the earliest opportunity.

Key takeaways

• The company will pull back on marketing in some territories, including in Asia, where its eponymous consumer travel-booking app still hasn’t yet gained many customers.
• Hopper has distinguished itself from other OTAs by offering a unique set of high-margin ancillary financial products for travelers built using machine learning that leverages vast data sets obtained from travel booking systems.
• Expedia ended a five-year partnership providing lodging inventory to Hopper, saying its ancillary products “exploit consumer anxiety and confuse customers, leading them to purchase services they neither need nor fully understand.”

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