Hipmunk is a tiny company compared to online travel giants like Priceline and Expedia that can far outspend it on marketing.
But Hipmunk, which has won a following for its simple, uncluttered hotel and flight search service, is finding creative new ways to market itself that don’t require spending a fortune. Last week, it announced a deal with Yelp, the crowdsourced review site, to allow people to book hotels through Hipmunk without ever leaving the Yelp site.
On Tuesday, it plans to announce a deal with an even bigger site, Yahoo, to allow travel bookings through Hipmunk on the site.
In a phone interview, Adam Goldstein, the chief executive and co-founder of Hipmunk, said the Yahoo and Yelp agreements are the first of a number of such deals the company plans to announce soon.
Although Hipmunk has raised $40 million in venture capital funding — $20 million of it in May from Oak Investment Partners and others — it decided not to lavish it on television advertising like competitors “because that means going head-to-head against companies spending hundreds of millions a year.”
Mr. Goldstein would not discuss specific financial terms of the company’s deals with Yahoo and Yelp, but said they would participate in the benefits Hipmunk received — commissions, usually — when one of its users booked a flight or hotel through a travel partner. He said Hipmunk has “millions” of unique visitors a month.
Like other online travel companies, Hipmunk lets you search for hotel and flights from multiple providers. But one of its twists is something it calls an “agony” filter, which displays the most convenient flight options first, based on a combination of factors including price, flight duration and number of stops. A similar sorting mechanism for hotels called an “ecstasy” filter considers price, amenities and customer reviews.
Mr. Goldstein said the company was one of the first travel sites to show vacation rentals from services like Airbnb in its hotel search results to give users a more complete picture of lodging options. Hipmunk hasn’t saturated its site with advertising like its competitors, which sometimes force pop-up browser windows without getting permission from users.
“We know that’s a game we can play, but we’d rather we get loyal users who come back to us over and over again,” Mr. Goldstein said.