First Look at the $22 Million, 6-Year-in-the-Making Travel Planning Website Hopper
Skift Take
After all this, does Hopper really want to bill itself as a "catalogue?" It sounds like a retro brochure or directory. And, despite all the delay and years of work, it appears that Hopper still has a very long way to go before it can deliver a comprehensive and respectable product that is ready for prime time.
After six years, and with $22 million in funding, trip-planning startup Hopper finally debuted its website in alpha mode, billing itself as "the world's largest travel catalogue."
The site, which likely is only visible to a segment of users, isn't as pretty as Pinterest. But, Hopper offers image-led, or alternately, map-based search that you can tweak by selecting desired themes such as wine, hiking or snowboarding, or you can browse by destinations, resorts, volcanos and natural wonders, for example.
In some ways, from its outward appearance, at least, Hopper resembles the bevy of Pinterest-influenced trip-planning or social discovery sites (Wanderfly, Trippy, Gtrot etc., or fill in the blank) that arrived and departed over the last couple of years.
The Hopper homepage presents images of U.S. getaways, including Southern California, Cape Cod, and Chicago, with flights to some cities bookable on Travelocity, others on AirTran.com, and many flight links not
