Expedia Group is once again supplying hotel inventory to Hopper, almost a year-and-a-half after Expedia abruptly terminated the partnership over stated concerns about Hopper’s fintech offerings, according to sources close to Hopper.
Expedia turned on the hotel supply spigot over the summer. These Expedia-provided hotels first began appearing on Capital One Travel, Hopper’s most important distribution partner.
Expedia is resuming providing hotel inventory to the Hopper app itself, as well, sources said.
Fenced Rates
The hotel inventory that Expedia is providing to Hopper comes at times with “fenced” rates, meaning these are nightly rates that hotels intend to provide to closed groups or in packages, and not openly to consumers, according to one of the sources. This could be a major friction point between Expedia and the hotel industry.
The resumption of the partnership, following a bitter breakup in 2023, came several months after Ariane Gorin became Expedia Group CEO. Gorin has been a champion of the company’s B2B segment, which includes thousands of partnerships, like the one with Hopper, and she has tweaked or reversed several of her predecessor’s policies.
In July 2023, then-Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern terminated the Hopper partnership with little notice. At the time, an Expedia Group spokesperson argued that Hopper’s fintech products “exploit consumer anxiety and confuse customers” — and Expedia didn’t want any part of it.
There haven’t been major changes to Hopper’s fintech products in the interim.
Another part of the breakup may have also revolved around Hopper at times undercutting Expedia’s hotel prices.
Hopper Layoffs
The renewed Expedia-Hopper partnership is a factor in layoffs and a restructuring that Hopper carried out a little more than two weeks ago.
Hopper fired 60-65 employees, about 10% of its workforce, according to three sources. The hardest hit area for layoffs, which included some 20 employees, came from the team that works on establishing direct relationships between Hopper and hotels.
Those direct relationships became super important when Expedia ceased supplying Hopper with Expedia’s global hotel supply in 2023. With the resumption of the partnership, those employees working on establishing direct hotel relationships became less needed.
New Focus
With the restructuring, Hopper has turned to a focus on major markets only, ones that have the largest financial upside, according to a source.
Under co-founder and CEO Fred Lalonde, Hopper has conducted several rounds of layoffs in the past few years. In October 2023, Hopper conducted another reorganization and laid off 30% of its staff.
Hopper said at the time that the restructuring was designed to let it focus more on growing its B2B business, and to try to get profitable. Meanwhile, its consumer has become secondary to its B2B distribution business, according to a source, who said Hopper gets the vast majority of its revenue from such partnerships.
Expedia has no comment on this story. Hopper and Capital One didn’t respond to requests for comments.