Hipmunk’s founders are constructing a successor to their now-defunct flight search service.
The startup was acquired by SAP-owned travel and expense platform Concur in 2016, and its CEO Adam Goldstein departed in 2018. But Goldstein instructed me he and his co-founder Steve Huffman (additionally co-founder and CEO of Reddit) have been nonetheless disenchanted when Concur shut the service down at first of final yr.
“Over the years, there were millions and millions of people who used it and loved it,” Goldstein mentioned. (I used to be a kind of individuals — even earlier than I knew what he was engaged on, I began out our name by telling Goldstein how a lot I miss Hipmunk.)
So the pair seed funded a challenge referred to as Flight Penguin, with Goldstein serving as the brand new firm’s chairman. And he mentioned the precise product was constructed by former Hipmunk developer Sheri Zada.
The Flight Penguin interface might be very acquainted to previous Hipmunk customers, with a visible structure that makes it straightforward to see the timing of flights and size of layovers. And simply as Hipmunk allowed customers to prepare outcomes by “agony” (in order that the highest outcomes aren’t simply low cost flights with inconvenient timing or ridiculous layovers), Flight Penguin permits them to kind their flights by “pain.”
Image Credits: Flight Penguin
But this isn’t simply the previous expertise with a recent coat of paint — it’s additionally meant to enhance on Hipmunk in a number of key methods. For one factor, it permits customers to go looking by Chase Ultimate Rewards Points (in addition to U.S. {dollars}, with the purpose of including extra currencies and rewards applications sooner or later).
And the product itself is a Google Chrome extension, somewhat than a conventional flight search web site. The extension really presents a full, standalone internet expertise (somewhat than an overlay on one other web site), however Goldstein mentioned this strategy remains to be necessary, as a result of it permits Flight Penguin to drag its knowledge “through the frontend instead of the backend,” giving it probably the most up-to-date knowledge. This helps to keep away from conditions the place a flight or value reveals up in search outcomes however isn’t obtainable on the airline’s or different vendor’s web site.
In addition, Goldstein mentioned Flight Penguin will present “all the flights.” In different phrases, it gained’t be making any offers with the airways to cover sure flights or costs, and it’ll additionally present airways that don’t usually make their flights obtainable on different search platforms.
“There are actually many, many flights available but consumers don’t see them because travel search sites work out these deals,” he mentioned. “We’re choosing not to play that game.”
That has the apparent good thing about providing extra complete outcomes, but additionally the drawback that Flight Penguin won’t be able to gather affiliate charges for flight purchases. Instead, after a 30-day trial interval, it should cost customers $10 monthly. (This is an introductory price and can possible change sooner or later.)
Goldstein acknowledged that that is in all probability “not going to be a mainstream product that 50 million Americans use,” however he’s hoping that it could actually entice a major subscriber base of frequent vacationers who “value their time and care about the flight booking experience.”
“What we learned from Hipmunk was […] the way business has traditionally been done in online travel worked for consumer in an era lots of competition between airlines and travel agencies,” he added. “In a world where there’s much less competition, you’re basically becoming an agent for the people you’re working with, and i’s hard to build a business model around providing a great user experience. That’s why we’re saying that we’re going to opt out of this game and play by our own rules.”
Flight Penguin is at the moment accepting signups for its waitlist, however Goldstein mentioned the corporate is solely utilizing this to carry customers on in a managed trend, and that it plans to maneuver individuals off the wait checklist fairly rapidly.
