Hipmunk wants to take its so-called agony-relieving flight search service to markets beyond the US, so has opted for Amadeus to help it out.
The decision to use Amadeus and its Meta Pricer, Master Pricer and Web Services tools, is primarily to give users the ability to search for international carriers and fares, as well as allow Hipmunk to launch in markets outside of North America.
Whether this counts as one of the “major announcements” promised when Hipmunk secured a $15 million funding round earlier this month is unclear, but the San Francisco-based startup’s “go big or go home” strategy means that it has felt the need to supplement its existing search and fare technology with additional systems.
Hipmunk used Google-run ITA Software‘s QPX system for its initial, domestic route-focused flight search engine, but it says partnering with Amadeus (no great friend of Google these days) will allow it to carry out its “important next step in serving our users and growing our business”.
Hipmunk will continue to use QPX for some of its search technology and has reiterated that it is a “multi-year, long-term” agreement.
The announcement is the second time in the space of a week that Amadeus has secured a contract with a US metasearch engine to work alongside ITA’s QPX.
Spain-based Amadeus last week unveiled an enhanced agreement with Hipmunk rival Kayak - a move which was actually signed in January this year and has coincided with Kayak using ITA to far lesser degree (61% to 39%) for its search queries over the past six months.
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About Kevin May
Each market is so different. I’m affraid getting amadeus is far from sufficient to “take agony out of international flight searches”.
They will need local teams to face well established actors in Europe such as liligo, skyscanner or jetcost.
Metapricer is not available for most of the emergent markets.
So my question is : which markets are they precisely expecting to reach?
@thomas – all good points to raise. Inevitably the intl strategy is not being disclosed as yet.
Absolutely exciting to see Hipmunk taking the professional direction – and becoming a merchant of record! Certainly a step away from “feeding the Beast” (http://t.co/cG4IBTlX)!
Very interesting to see how things play out with flights, and how soon will this process begin with their hotel product!
Keep it up guys!
@nikolai – nothing in this announcement to say Hipmunk will become a merchant of record./ It’s still meta.