Rather than crushing it, the pandemic helped travel startup Hopper speed up its metamorphosis from a mobile app that tracked changes in flight prices to an online travel company making a majority of its money from selling ancillary services such as price protection and trip protection.
“It’s weird it took a pandemic to realize this, given that we first debuted the financial service products in 2018,” said founder and CEO Frederic Lalonde. “But the crisis made it much clearer that the financial services increased the customer spend while also being higher margin than the travel products themselves.”
Hopper said on Tuesday it had closed a $175 million investment, led by GPI Capital, a private equity firm.
Glade Brook Capital, WestCap, Goldman Sachs Growth, and Accomplice also participated in this round, which was all equity.
Hopper’s Fintech for Travel
As Skift has reported, Hopper’s “fintech” offerings now represent “a majority” of its revenue, which a…