You know travel is on a roll when the country’s second-largest company gets involved … Australia’s biggest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) will add an in-app “travel experience” to its digital inventory that aims to help customers plan and book travel.
Expected to launch in 2024, the new CBA offering is the result of a partnership with Canadian mobile travel marketplace Hopper.
According to CBA, the partnership will see Hopper’s platform integrated into a Commbank in-app feature that will allow customers to book flights, accommodation and rental cars (in Australia and abroad) and “save while doing it”.
“Through our new exclusive relationship in the Australian market with Hopper we can help customers dream, plan and book travel, and manage their travel finances, all in one place within the CommBank app,” CBA Group Executive, Retail Banking, Angus Sullivan said.
“Hopper makes travel planning and budgeting easier, and helps you to get the best value across flights, accommodation and rental cars.”
End-to-end products
CBA says the new travel experience will integrate with Hopper via the b2b ‘Hopper Cloud’ platform and also offer customer “the lowest price on 300 airlines, 2 million hotels and 100 rental car companies”.
“CommBank is a leader in innovation and financial solutions in Australia, making them the ideal partner for Hopper Cloud,” Hopper President and Co-Founder Dakota Smith said.
“With this new exclusive arrangement, we’ll be able to create an end-to-end travel offering for their customers, complete with world-class flexibility and disruption products to improve the traveller experience.”
The CBA’s current range of travel features include complimentary travel insurance (through some credit cards), points redemption (on CommBank Awards cards), free international transactions (on some credit cards) and international travel products like Travel Money Card and foreign cash.
Reputedly the world’s fastest-growing mobile-first travel marketplace, the Hopper app has over 100 million app downloads, making it the most downloaded travel app in North America.
The Commbank has probably been looking at its own reports too … earlier this month, a CBA study revealed that Australian consumers were throwing their budgets out the window in order to travel.
Last month, Newcastle Airport also revealed the CBA as sole financier of a new international terminal at the hub.
