Canada: Gen Z- and millennial-friendly online travel agency [OTA], Hopper, has rebranded its B2B business as Hopper Technology Solutions [HTS] and expanded its e-commerce offerings.
Having established itself as one of the leading and most comprehensive OTAs worldwide in recent years, the platform has evolved into travel fintech and modern e-commerce, as Hopper invests in providing a comprehensive travel platform for all of its partners. The company is planning to capture market share from its competitors through increased consumer bookings in all channels as it powers and services a number of direct channels.
The rebranding of Hopper’s B2B business as HTS is another step in the company’s evolution towards a full-scale travel platform. HTS will now power travel brands with distributed fintech, partner-branded travel platforms and e-commerce in one place.
HTS introduces a new category of Hopper’s product offering – HTS E-commerce – to design and power direct channels for global travel brands in order to elevate their e-commerce experience. It is designed to increase revenue and conversion for these partner travel brands, both on mobile and desktop.
The full HTS e-commerce platform features components such as customer service automation, top-tier fraud detection, cloud-based international infrastructure, personalised merchandising, a global payments stack integrated with a hosted wallet and rewards ledger, bank-level infosecurity, and offerings in over 20 languages.
Dakota Smith, president and co-founder of Hopper, said: “While the Hopper mobile app is growing rapidly, HTS comprises over half our company’s revenue just a year and a half after launching, and by next year it’s expected to account for two-thirds of our business. We are excited to bring our best-in-class E-commerce offerings to help our partners offer a more seamless and comprehensive experience to travellers – while driving real business results.”
In July, Hopper partnered with Brazilian neobank and digital financial services platform, Nubank, which is making its first step into the travel category with the expected launch of a new travel portal next year. By partnering with Hopper, Nubank will offer a “comprehensive” travel portal within its existing Shopping platform, the company’s marketplace, to facilitate the day-to-day and financial planning of customers around the world.
Susan Ho, head of Hopper Homes, will be one of the experts speaking at the inaugural STRz Summit in London on Wednesday 18 October when she participates in a panel on ‘Driving attention, loyalty and retention’. Book your tickets now at this link.