VP Hotels, Sylvie Hachey
FlightHub
For decades, travel booking followed a fairly predictable sequence: choose a destination, book a flight, reserve a hotel and perhaps arrange a rental car.
That linear model is giving way to something more fluid as consumers increasingly organize trips around concerts, sporting events, culinary experiences and other reasons to travel.
For online travel agencies, the strategic challenge is no longer simply helping consumers find a competitive airfare. It is connecting the different parts of a trip in a way that reduces friction, improves value and keeps the traveler within one ecosystem.
FlightHub is responding by expanding beyond its traditional strength in air travel. The Montreal-based online travel agency recently launched standalone hotel booking as it works toward becoming a more comprehensive travel platform.
“Customers are looking for things that are efficient. They’re looking for one-stop shops,” said Sylvie Hachey, vice president of lodging at FlightHub. “Lodging and accommodations were just the natural next steps for FlightHub.”
From Flight Booking To Connected Journey
Adding hotels may sound like a straightforward product extension, but it reflects a broader change in how travel companies think about the customer journey. A traveler who books a flight still needs a place to stay—and increasingly expects the booking platform to anticipate that need.
FlightHub’s hotel strategy includes standalone lodging reservations as well as bundled flight-and-hotel packages. The bundle is particularly important because it can give consumers a clearer financial reason to consolidate purchases.
“We are pushing to provide the whole experience to the customer, making it easy to book bundle packages where they can save a lot more money,” Hachey said.
That approach creates value on both sides of the platform. Travelers gain convenience and potential savings, while FlightHub gets an opportunity to build a deeper relationship with customers who historically may have used the company for only one portion of their trip.
The company says early hotel performance has been encouraging. Hachey noted that conversion rates for standalone hotels are already comparable to those of established online travel competitors, despite FlightHub having launched the product in June.
FlightHub primarily serves Canadian travelers, who account for approximately 65% of its customers, compared with 35% from the United States. Yet the United States remains its leading destination. That cross-border mix creates an opportunity to connect air and lodging for travelers who may be less familiar with the hotel choices in their destination.
Experiences Are Reordering The Booking Funnel
The connected journey is becoming more important because consumers do not always begin trip planning with a flight search. In many cases, the catalyst is an experience.
A fan buys a ticket to a sporting event or concert and then looks for a hotel. Another traveler chooses a destination around its restaurant scene, festival or outdoor activities. The flight may be the second or third decision rather than the first.
“Customers are booking more and more experiences,” Hachey said. “They’re traveling to experience, and not necessarily just go somewhere. They’re looking for the whole experience.”
FlightHub saw that behavior around the FIFA World Cup in North America, where the company reported strong demand and introduced its “Fly to the Beautiful Game” initiative to help travelers reach host destinations.
Sports tourism offers a useful illustration of how the travel funnel is changing. An event establishes the destination and dates, but the consumer must still coordinate airfare, lodging and local logistics. When those products sit in separate digital environments, the traveler is forced to compare options across multiple platforms.
The opportunity for an OTA is to make those connections more intuitive. A platform that understands why someone is traveling can potentially surface more relevant lodging, better-timed flights and useful bundled pricing.
Hachey would not estimate what percentage of FlightHub’s bookings are driven by events or experiences. However, she said the pattern is visible both in customer behavior and in information shared by hotel partners.
“We are definitely seeing trends where customers are buying concert tickets or buying events for different sporting events,” she said. “It is the experience that is, in a lot of cases, driving travel.”
Connectivity Is More Than A Consumer Interface
Creating a connected journey requires more than placing flights and hotels on the same website. Behind the consumer experience is a complex technical network connecting hotel inventory, availability, rates and content to the OTA.
Hachey previously worked in hotel connectivity at Expedia, where she gained experience linking lodging suppliers with online distribution platforms. She is applying that technical knowledge—as well as relationships with hotel suppliers—to a strategy designed specifically for FlightHub.
Her experience highlights an important reality about travel retail: consumers judge the simplicity of the interface, but that simplicity depends on what happens behind it. Hotel descriptions, room types, images, amenities, availability and pricing all must be accurate and synchronized.
“Content is king, but it’s not the only thing,” Hachey said. FlightHub’s near-term priorities include improving hotel content, securing competitive rates and refining the customer journey.
Supplier relationships will be central to that effort. A connected travel experience can break down quickly when content is inconsistent, rates change unexpectedly or room details are unclear. Better connectivity can reduce those gaps while giving consumers greater confidence to complete the reservation.
A Practical Role For AI
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how travelers research destinations and compare options. Yet Hachey takes a measured view of its immediate role in FlightHub’s lodging strategy.
The company has already used AI internally and operationally, she said. However, consumer-facing AI that independently advises travelers or handles bookings is not currently the central focus of the hotel rollout.
Instead, FlightHub is concentrating on the fundamentals: stronger hotel supply, useful content, competitive rates and smoother bundles. AI may help the company execute those priorities behind the scenes, but it does not replace them.
That distinction matters. Generative AI can inspire a trip or summarize a destination, but converting inspiration into a reliable reservation requires live prices, accurate inventory and dependable supplier connections. The real competitive advantage may come from combining AI-assisted discovery with the less visible infrastructure required to complete the journey.
Building The Foundation First
FlightHub’s immediate ambition is to improve how it sells hotels and bundles them with flights. Experiences may eventually become a larger part of the platform, but Hachey emphasized that the next year will be focused on lodging execution.
That disciplined approach makes sense. The connected journey is not created by adding every possible travel product at once. It begins by linking the most important components in a way that is useful, reliable and economically compelling for the customer.
As travel becomes increasingly motivated by what people want to do—not simply where they want to go—the platforms that reduce the distance between inspiration and booking will be well positioned. For FlightHub, lodging is the next connection in that journey.
