Hopper launched an online travel booking platform ‘V Trip’ for credit card members and V members of Sumitomo Mitsui Card (SMBC), one of the largest credit card issuers. This is the first entry into the Japanese market for the growing OTA with the airfare price freezing service.
The Hopper’s global strategy except North America is BtoB approach by Hopper Technology Solutions (HTS). Dakota Smith, Hooper President and Cofounder, who visited Japan to attend the press conference for V Trip, talked about how it develops its business in Japan.
How do you expect the Japanese market?
Japan has a huge domestic travel market with strong purchasing power. Cashless transactions and online travel reservations are expanding, and we view it as a mature market, but we believe there is still room for growth. V Trip is our first business venture in such a market, We are excited to develop it together with SMBC, one of the world's leading financial institutions.
How do you develop your business in Japan?
We will develop our business as a travel agency for Japanese customers. This is also why a financial institution (Sumitomo Mitsui Card), which is not a travel agency, is partnering with us. We operate in 30 countries, including Japan, and take the necessary measures in each country, but special measures are necessary in Japan as well.
We have been actively recruiting since last year to develop the services in Japan. Currently, about 10 development engineers are working in Tokyo. SMBC has also invested a lot of human resources.
Are you planning to expand the business in Japan?
This contract with SMBC is exclusive to Japanese financial institutions. V Trip is the start of our business in Japan, and we would like to expand our partnership to industries other than financial institutions in the future. we plan to partner with airlines and hotels, for instance. In Asia, we are already collaborating with AirAsia and others.
How do you localize customer services in Japan?
Preparing for V Trip, we have worked as a team with SMBC to build a service that will satisfy Japanese customers.
As a service unique to Japan, we will enhance customer support. We will set up a Japanese call center and use AI chatbots to handle customer inquiries.i In the Japanese market, where customers have high standards, it is important for Japanese people to respond in Japanese. We believe that this is something we should do, even if it costs.
V Trip plans to offer package tours in the third quarter of this year. We will expand the Hopper's specialty, fintech services, n the second half of this year. We are currently preparing to provide these services in Japan.
ホッパーPresident兼共同創業者のダゴダ・スミス氏（左）、三井住友カード代表取締役社長の大西幸彦氏（右）
What kind of services are planning to offer?
We have a possibility to create a new product. Around 2018, we only dealt with airline tickets. After that, we took the time to expand our categories to hotels, rental cars, and more. In the future, we have plans to expand into areas such as local activity.
How do you purchase accommodations, including ryokan?
Currently, of the 20,000 hotels listed on V-Trip, some are directly contracted by our local partner team, while others are purchased through agencies. In addition, some Japanese facilities are listed under global contracts with hotel chains around the world.
Of course, we are highly interested in ryokan as a unique accommodation in Japan, Rather than that, our global users are interested in that. The Japan team is focusing on contracts with ryokans and the number of contracts (listings) with ryokans is expected to increase in the future.
Vトリップでは、今秋にパッケージツアーを発表する予定
