Pay less, travel more

When is the right time to book? Airline and accommodation rates fluctuate, and the early bird doesn’t always get the best deal, so “there’s tremendous anxiety around the purchase of flights and hotel rooms,” says Frederic Lalonde, founder and CEO of Hopper , which offers a solution.

Having already founded an online hotel-booking company (sold to Expedia in 2002), Lalonde realized that budget-conscious travellers would appreciate knowing when to pull the trigger. It took six years and $12 million, but since 2014, Hopper has been using artificial intelligence to parse online pricing data and predict the best time to book.

Lalonde admits his business model is different: “We only make money when people buy from us, but three-quarters of our resources are dedicated to telling people it’s not a good idea to book.” Even so, he says, more than 100 million trips have been arranged through Montreal-based Hopper, making it the most-used travel app in North America.

What’s next? Besides hotels and flights, Lalonde thinks his predictive analytics can also help customers save money on such things as travel insurance and excursions. “We have a 30-year plan to build a $100-billion market-cap company,” he says.