Hopper acquires Smooss to cultivate airline partnerships

Hopper is making its third acquisition in less than a year.

The travel marketplace, valued at $5 billion, is acquiring Paris-based airline merchandising and customer care platform Smooss, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Startup of 2021. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed.

Last spring Hopper acqui-hired the team from Journy and in October it acquired PlacePass. 

Smooss, founded in 2019, provides solutions on top of reservations systems for increasing ancillary revenue and also streamlining flight disruption recovery. 

The entire Smooss team, including co-founder and CEO Benjamin Lalanne, will join Hopper as part of the team leading its B2B initiative, Hopper Cloud, and will work to expand adoption of it among airlines.

With Hopper Cloud, travel providers, including airlines, hotels, online travel agencies, metasearch companies and travel agencies can distribute Hopper’s fintech or travel agency content. Current partners include Capital One, Amadeus, Kayak, Trip.com, Marriott and MakeMyTrip.

“The Smooss team has built an impressive operation and they are a welcome addition to Hopper,” says Frederic Lalonde, co-founder and CEO of Hopper. 

“As airlines focus on recovery this year, fintech products – like Hopper’s Price Freeze, Cancel for Any Reason, and Flight Disruption Guarantee – have the ability to drive conversion and create new revenue streams. We look forward to continuing a close partnership with these airlines as we integrate the Smooss team.”

Hopper says it will also continue to serve Smooss’ partners, including the Air France-KLM Group and Corsair, through its Hopper Cloud service.

“Hopper has experienced impressive and sustained growth over the past several years,” Lalanne says.

“Joining the team to enhance our existing partnerships with Hopper’s scale and technological abilities, was an easy decision for us. We are excited to bring our expertise in the airline industry and revenue generation to Hopper and help airlines from around the world tap into Hopper’s revolutionary fintech capabilities.” 

Hopper says it is actively seeking to acquire other travel, data science or engineering-heavy startups.

In separate news, Hopper is entering a partnership with RateGain to connect to hotels and hospitality chains globally. The agreement will enable reservations made through certain Hopper Cloud partners to flow through RateGain’s Connectivity Switch platform. Hopper will access RateGain’s competitive pricing intelligence product for hotels and car rentals.