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OTA Analysis: Hopper
Hopper is an OTA that is gaining in popularity as it continues to make searching for airfare deals easier for consumers. Current users can save up to 40% on flights, which is a major driver of the company's success. You will find a deep dive of our research on Hopper below.
What is Hopper
Hopper is a mobile app and travel agency that analyzes historical flight pricing data and makes predictions with a 95% accuracy for users to secure the lowest fare possible. Since its launch in 2015, Hopper has had over 17 million installations.
Hopper's business model is based on a commission fee charged to the user and incorporated into the flight price as well as commissions acquired from the airlines when users book through the app.
Comparative Advantage
The travel and tourism industry is valued at 6.3 trillion dollars and the tech industry has taken note, as travel category apps take 7th place among the most downloaded.
Hopper's competitive advantage stems from various points. Hopper offers up to 40% savings on flights through the analysis of billions of flight prices daily. Other Hopper features include ease of searching for a next possible destination, price prediction over the course of the next six months from the user's selected date, and making an overall recommendation on whether to purchase or wait. On top of this is Hopper provides real-time push notifications, which allow the user to watch the prices on specific routes and get a later recommendation via notification from Hopper on low flight prices.
Earlier this year, Hopper released the "Fair-Bear" feature which helps users understand and breakdown the ticket costs, offering more clarity on the restrictions and features of a specific ticket.
This last September, Hopper released a new feature called "Flex-Watch", which allows users to see what destinations are the cheapest around the globe and is intended for trips no longer than 2 weeks. The feature suggests deals based on the price analysis over the course of different months and global destinations. More recently, Hopper announced it would be expanding its price prediction technology to hotels.
Hopper by the numbers
Since its launch in 2015, Hopper has tracked over 29 million trips to date and users have booked over $300 million in flights. As of February 2017, Hopper was selling over $1 million in flights per day as of September, that number increased to over $1.5 million.
In December 2016, Hopper announced 10 million-plus installations, and as of September 2017, that number has increased to over 17 million.
According to Hopper's CEO and Co-Founder, Frederic Lalonde, 90% of Hopper's sales are coming from the 20 million push notifications sent each month advising users to buy tickets when they predict will be the lowest price. After securing its latest funding, Hopper plans to increase its staff to more than 120 employees between its offices in Canada and US, scale its growth, partner with more airlines abroad, and expand its international presence. As part of this international growth strategy, they will focus on partnering with low-cost airlines and expanding the payment options for users to pay in their local currency. Hopper CEO projects to have over 30 million installations by May 2018.
Over the past 30 days, Hopper.com has received 810,000 visitors, an increase of 100,000 a month before. The average duration a visitors stays on the website is one minute and nine seconds and there is currently a bounce rate of 62.76%. It is ranked as the 327th website in the Travel: Airlines and Airports category and is on the rise. The website hopperapp.com has not received enough traffic for SimilarWeb to gather statistics.
Employee Ratio
5 Executive/Leadership positions:
CEO/Founder
CTO/Co-Founder
Co-Founder
COO
CIO-CSI
7 Heads of Departments with the following titles:
Head of Support and Ticketing
Head of Product
Head of Growth
Head of Data Science
Head of Office & Administration
Head of Agency Operations
Head of Hotels
69 Employees with the following titles:
Support — 19 employees
Development — 13 employees
Product — 8 employees
Growth — 7 employees
Design — 4 employees
Data Science — 3 employees
Public Relations — 3 employees
People & Talent — 2 employees
Admin — 2 employees
Creative — 2 employees
Finance — 2 employees
Hotels — 1 employee
Partnerships — 1 employee
Agency Operations — 1 employee
Network Architect — 1 employee
Conclusion
Hopper is growing steadily as seen through the increased number of app downloads, the number of ticket sales per day, and its projected expansion into the global market. All in all, Hopper continues to make its mark in the travel app industry with the roll out of new features such as the flex-watch and hotel price prediction, as well as its ease of use and push-notification price recommendations.