I've used Hipmunk several times. The interface is fantastic. The ipad app is also great.
It does immensely suck that you leave Hipmunk to actually buy the tickets. I had to redo my entire search and purchase because the Safari view of Delta's website in the ipad Hipmunk app crashed.
I also had to recently buy my cross-country Christmas tickets through Expedia. For whatever reason Expedia had far, far better selection and prices. Usually Hipmunk is great but in this case it wasn't even close. That's definitely made me slightly wary of it for the future.
All things said it's great. Can't wait to see where it is in a few more years.
I try Hipmunk every so often, the last time being about a month ago. Every time, Kayak shows more flight options for the same query than Hipmunk, and often cheaper ones. I don't get it, they both use ITA on the backend.
I'd use Hipmunk more often if they actually fulfilled their functionality promise as an aggregator. A pretty UI isn't enough.
Yes shameless self plug but we'd love for them to use Spreedly in the same way SeatGeek does to solve this "drop you on a landing page and fill out all your card data and personal information again" Although I have heard that in the travel referral business they actually want you to go to those landing pages as they make no money off the airline ticket. So they rely on upselling you $30 or $50 "insurance" or other add ons. So Hipmunk would have to start doing that or they'd get bumped as a partner as their referral traffic doesn't "convert" well to upsells. (I think this is just for airline tickets less so for hotels or car rentals)
Just wanted to throw my experience into this thread.
Every time I've booked a flight in the past couple years, I've gone to Hipmunk to check schedules. Out of the 10 or so flights I've taken, Hipmunk always provided the same prices flights that were important (cheapest/most convenient for me), but I can't say I bothered to look for things that weren't convenient. These were always major airport to major airport things in the US, however.
I had the same issue with buying tickets. Whichever site it sent me to lacked a "known traveler number" section, so I ditched to go to the airline's site.
Unfortunately got similar experience. Love searching on hipmunk, but got a few times problem with buying tickets there, so I redo my searches at other website.
> Although Hipmunk has raised $40 million in venture capital funding — $20 million of it in May from Oak Investment Partners and others — it decided not to lavish it on television advertising like competitors “because that means going head-to-head against companies spending hundreds of millions a year.”
> Mr. Goldstein would not discuss specific financial terms of the company’s deals with Yahoo and Yelp, but said they would participate in the benefits Hipmunk received — commissions, usually — when one of its users booked a flight or hotel through a travel partner.
Hipmunk's position in such a competitive market is not enviable.
These types of revenue sharing deals often look very attractive on paper because they don't require much if any capital, but they can be disastrous and far more costly in the long run. In a good outcome, you frequently end up with a handful of partners who drive most of your business, effectively own many of the customers they send you, and have a permanent claim on a substantial portion of your margin.
Put simply, these deals tend to defer the hard costs associated with customer acquisition but also drive them up.
In some cases the amount of leverage these sources of customers have over you can be crippling as well.
The other factor that I feel doesn't get brought up enough is the attribution piece. How much did they REALLY contribute to bringing a customer vs. all your other marketing efforts, brand awareness that has built up over time, etc.?
In the worst cases, some partners can just be parasitic and leech off bottom of the funnel traffic to maximize their return and minimize their risk. The trick is finding the right balance between all those efforts which requires data, flexibility, and trust between all parties in the relationship.
Yeah for Hipmunk, Capitaine Train and others. They are providing a very efficient, no fuss, travel booking experience.
Historic players like Amadeus or DBahn (not to mention SNCF...), beware, these guys are rocking your world even more than you may be suspecting...
I'm not sure they need to beware - DB\SCNF aren't really competing with the likes of Capitaine Train. If you buy a ticket from Paris to Lyon with CT for example - you're still getting the same SNCF train ticket and they'll get a giant chunk of that money (I have no idea what sort of referral CT get). I suppose its in these rail companies' best interests that someone puts together a nice interface for their ticket systems.
I have a simple question:
Why are sites like Hipmunk, Kayak etc called "travel search" sites?
Travel is far more than booking flights, hotels, cars, cruises and vacation packages
At best sites like this are booking sites for xyz but I have a heard time reconciling the appropriateness of "travel search"
Because these sites and ours (room77.com) are MetaSearch sites, we search prices from multiple sources and aggregate the information (inventory, content, prices) into one place. Booking sites like Expedia and Priceline are considered OTAs (Online Travel Agency) since they are the entity that sells you the actual inventory whereas metasearch scours the market for the best prices.
I'm not sure there's a point in using anything but Google Flights, to be honest... But in my experience hipmunk is among the best in the rest of a very crowded pack.
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|11 years ago|reply
It does immensely suck that you leave Hipmunk to actually buy the tickets. I had to redo my entire search and purchase because the Safari view of Delta's website in the ipad Hipmunk app crashed.
I also had to recently buy my cross-country Christmas tickets through Expedia. For whatever reason Expedia had far, far better selection and prices. Usually Hipmunk is great but in this case it wasn't even close. That's definitely made me slightly wary of it for the future.
All things said it's great. Can't wait to see where it is in a few more years.
[+] [-] whopa|11 years ago|reply
I'd use Hipmunk more often if they actually fulfilled their functionality promise as an aggregator. A pretty UI isn't enough.
[+] [-] jusben1369|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lost_name|11 years ago|reply
Every time I've booked a flight in the past couple years, I've gone to Hipmunk to check schedules. Out of the 10 or so flights I've taken, Hipmunk always provided the same prices flights that were important (cheapest/most convenient for me), but I can't say I bothered to look for things that weren't convenient. These were always major airport to major airport things in the US, however.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] philip1209|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakozaur|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spez|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nighthawk454|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7Figures2Commas|11 years ago|reply
> Mr. Goldstein would not discuss specific financial terms of the company’s deals with Yahoo and Yelp, but said they would participate in the benefits Hipmunk received — commissions, usually — when one of its users booked a flight or hotel through a travel partner.
Hipmunk's position in such a competitive market is not enviable.
These types of revenue sharing deals often look very attractive on paper because they don't require much if any capital, but they can be disastrous and far more costly in the long run. In a good outcome, you frequently end up with a handful of partners who drive most of your business, effectively own many of the customers they send you, and have a permanent claim on a substantial portion of your margin.
Put simply, these deals tend to defer the hard costs associated with customer acquisition but also drive them up.
[+] [-] shostack|11 years ago|reply
The other factor that I feel doesn't get brought up enough is the attribution piece. How much did they REALLY contribute to bringing a customer vs. all your other marketing efforts, brand awareness that has built up over time, etc.?
In the worst cases, some partners can just be parasitic and leech off bottom of the funnel traffic to maximize their return and minimize their risk. The trick is finding the right balance between all those efforts which requires data, flexibility, and trust between all parties in the relationship.
[+] [-] karambahh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smcl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] merrillii|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ASquare|11 years ago|reply
At best sites like this are booking sites for xyz but I have a heard time reconciling the appropriateness of "travel search"
What am I missing?
[+] [-] calbear81|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_j|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrea_s|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ape4|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beartime|11 years ago|reply
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