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A comment on Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur. Parent comment

Re:Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur by toast0 on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @08:33PM (#12493421)
Even in 2010 when they started, air bookings didn't have enough margin to pay a decent commission. Flights gets people in the door, but you need to sell them a hotel to make money.
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Re:Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur by corford on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @08:56PM (#12493518)
There's plenty of money being made in flights but it requires serious volume. Hipmunk were never able to take enough traffic away from kayak, skyscanner etc. as their only real differentiation (agony search) wasn't a big enough pull (other than for a sub section of business flyers who didn't have a travel implant to outsource the leg work to).

They also didn't put any serious energy in to markets outside the US (much less brand awareness in Europe) and were late to monetise supplementary channels like hotels and car hire.

Regardless, it's true that flight search is a tough game. Big incumbents, tight margins, crazy web of legacy madness behind the scenes (tech and business side).

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Re:Hipmunk (YC S10) Acquired by Concur by polynomial on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @06:03PM (#12501586)
> their only real differentiation (agony search)

Um, ground-breaking search visualisation UI? Or am I missing something?

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