Two
months after losing access to hotel and vacation rental supply from Expedia
Group, Hopper is bringing in two new sources of global hotel inventory.
Through
both its B2C app and its B2B partners’ channels, Hopper will provide access to
inventory from both Hotelbeds and WebBeds, through what it calls "long-term" strategic partnerships.
These deals bring Hopper's total hotel supply to “millions”
of properties, although 65% of its hotels in the United States come through direct connections, according to a spokesperson.
Spain-based
Hotelbeds offers more than 300,000 properties in 195 destinations while WebBeds,
a brand of Australia-based Webjet, has more than 430,000 hotels in thousands of
destinations around the world.
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“We’re proud to partner with these two global, hotel contracting
powerhouses,” said Dakota Smith, president and co-founder of Hopper.
“Ensuring
that travelers have transparency and optionality has always been at the core of
Hopper’s offerings. Partnering with Hotelbeds and WebBeds will allow us to
supercharge our efforts in building a best-in-class global hotel supply
network.”
In July Expedia Group pulled its hotel and vacation rental
supply over concerns that “Hopper’s product … features exploit consumer anxiety
and confuse customers…”
At the time,
Hopper responded that Expedia Group’s decision was a sign that it “clearly views
Hopper as a significant competitive threat” and that its decision to withdraw
supply from Hopper channels would “not affect the selection or
prices available to Hopper consumers.”
The partnerships with WebBeds and
Hotelbeds only provide hotel supply. In August 2022, Hopper signed a deal with Evolve to access its supply of vacation rentals and says it remains the largest supplier of properties for Hopper Homes, providing more than 24,000
vacation homes in 750 markets. At the time, Hopper said it had a total of about 2.2 million properties in the Hopper Homes system, but its unclear what the number is now that Expedia has pulled Vrbo inventory.