4 ms·

> "collect roughly ~13% in commission from hotel and airline bookings" Hotels probably, but I seriously doubt this for airlines. After all, a 13% commission wo

> "collect roughly ~13% in commission from hotel and airline bookings" Hotels probably, but I seriously doubt this for airlines. After all, a 13% commission would likely put the airline in the red for that booking. Flying is one of the lowest-margin businesses in existence, and makes discount retail feel like a walk in the park. > "HipMunk also launched their hotel location-based mobile app this year. It is very well-designed but I’m really not feeling it." I really agree, and it's really too bad, because I love their flight-booking product and I'm really rooting for the team, but both their hotel booking site and mobile apps are IMO worse than the incumbents, which falls well short of their "kicking everyone's ass" bar that they set for flights. Confusing button placement, unclear comparison tools, incomprehensible color-coding, and a location-centric search... I just can't get behind it.

ted0 14y ago
re: hipmunk. It just doesn't 'feel' right. The ideas all seem right but it just doesn't work for me.
gcb 14y ago
Yeah, I'd ignore all the industry "insight" here and consume that as a user opinion on travel sites.
bigiain 14y ago
+1 I used to run a site that averaged ~29% after credit card fees on hotel rooms, but we never managed to swing a deal that wouldn't have seen the credit card companies making more money than we did on flights. (Maybe their "13%" figure is averaged over high-margin hotel rooms and low-to-zero margin flights?)
- ted0 14y ago
  I understand that in a lot of cases, the rate is higher than the 13% that I cited. That is definitely an average that I've pulled from a few different sources. Would be interesting to hear other averages...
  - bigiain 14y ago
    FWIW, my information is quite out-of-date, I left that industry in '08 (I started in it in '96! http://web.archive.org/web/19961019065611/http://www.oztravel.com.au/ http://web.archive.org/web/19961019065611/http://www.oztrave... )

ted0 14y ago

re: hipmunk. It just doesn't 'feel' right. The ideas all seem right but it just doesn't work for me.

gcb 14y ago

Yeah, I'd ignore all the industry "insight" here and consume that as a user opinion on travel sites.

bigiain 14y ago

+1 I used to run a site that averaged ~29% after credit card fees on hotel rooms, but we never managed to swing a deal that wouldn't have seen the credit card companies making more money than we did on flights. (Maybe their "13%" figure is averaged over high-margin hotel rooms and low-to-zero margin flights?)

ted0 14y ago
I understand that in a lot of cases, the rate is higher than the 13% that I cited. That is definitely an average that I've pulled from a few different sources. Would be interesting to hear other averages...
- bigiain 14y ago
  FWIW, my information is quite out-of-date, I left that industry in '08 (I started in it in '96! http://web.archive.org/web/19961019065611/http://www.oztravel.com.au/ http://web.archive.org/web/19961019065611/http://www.oztrave... )