We’re excited for the New Year, but let’s take a moment to look back on 2021 – it’s been a ride!

Let's take a moment to look back on 2021 – it’s been a ride! Overall, we had an eventful 2021, and we can’t wait to see what’s next.

In June, we proudly partnered with Vueling launching Vueling Global. 

Connecting easyJet and Deutsche Bahn via Berlin Brandenburg Airport on Worldwide by easyJet in July and facilitating intermodal connections is another project we are excited to be a part of. 

Our partnership with Air Transat who launched their own platform Connectair by Airtransat rounded off our year in November.

But that’s not all: Our fantastic network of partners has also grown this year, and we’re excited to keep going. A big thank you to all our partners for the amazing collaboration this year!

After a long break, we were also excited to be attending in-person events again, from World Routes in Milan, Aviation Festival Americas, to World Airline Dubai, among many others. 

Internally, there have also been changes and developments – we welcomed Sarah Hanan to the Team as Commercial Director, and Nick Ashton as Head of Partnerships and Industry Affairs. We’ve also grown and added new talent to our development teams: Teddi, Siggi, Maggi, Hinrik, Sæunn, Melkorka, and Ingunn. Of course we can not forget our amazing Executive Office Manager Hulda, and our Marketing Specialist Marie. 

Overall, we’ve had an eventful 2021, and we can’t wait to see what’s next. 

Happy Holidays and a joyful New Year from the team at Dohop!

This move is a key moment in our story. It’s a symbol of our growth and ambitions to grow together with our airline partners, helping them soar to new heights in the process.

Dohop, the European market leader for alternative interline solutions, has today announced it will now enable Norse Atlantic Airways and Thai Vietjet to offer seamless and connected journeys to their travellers.

Back in 2004, when Dohop was just in its infancy, we moved to our first office space. There were maybe four or five of us - very much a start-up size - and we were all excited to have our own official space. But it turned out that the space didn’t really feel quite right for us, so we didn’t stay there for long. Instead, we found an office space for start-ups, which felt a lot more like us. I remember the landlord of that space turning to me and saying, “Kristján, it’s a good thing you came here. All the companies that come through here become very successful.” 

And what do you know? He turned out to be right! We grew and continued to grow and soon we needed to find a bigger space. That’s when, in 2010, we moved to our headquarters in Reykjavik at Nóatun 17 (N17), and we stayed there for the better part of 13 years, renting more and more space until we ended up having an entire floor to ourselves.

When travel started to recover post-Covid, business picked up, and Dohop’s growth trajectory continued. Soon we realised that we would outgrow our offices in Noatun. The time had come to look around and find a new space that would give us a fresh start. 

We soon found that space in Katrinartun 4 (K4), located in Höfdatorg, an area close to downtown Reykjavik that many financial and IT companies call home. 

On moving day, there was a buzz in the air. The team came to our old offices early in the morning to pack our 13 years worth of furniture and memories. Everyone was excited for this new chapter, and we quickly loaded everything into the back of a moving van, and off we went to our new address - about 500 yards down the road. 

In the end, the entire moving process took us only five to six hours, and once unpacked at K4, we rewarded ourselves with pizza and beer.

When I initially saw K4, I wasn’t immediately hooked. It’s an open plan office, and I had some concerns because at N17, we had smaller rooms for the teams, which allowed us to forge close working relationships and even friendships, and I was worried that this would get lost in an open plan office. After our first two months at the new office, I am no longer worried about that. If anything, it feels like the teams are closer than ever, and communication and collaboration are more effective. It’s also a beautiful space for our customers and partners to enjoy when they visit.

Our move to K4 is an important new chapter for us, underscoring our commitment to growing with our airline partners and helping them expand and thrive. 

We are settling into our new space, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for us. 

Here’s to the next chapter of growth at Dohop!

From N17 to K4 - A new chapter of growth for Dohop

Dohop has expanded significantly this year. Overall, we had an eventful 2022, and we can’t wait to see what’s next. Here’s to a brilliant 2023!

We received a follow-on investment from SEP in March, which was an exciting start to the year. We also sold the most Dohop-enabled connections in history, in March, making it a record-breaking month for the company. 

The momentum continued, and in April AirTransat announced the addition of three new carriers to connectair by AirTransat. This year saw numerous new launches, including those by Viva, Jazeera Airlines, Norse Atlantic Airways, and Thai Vietjet Air. All of these airlines partnered with Dohop to power their own connecting platforms. Additionally, many already-established Dohop-powered airline platforms expanded their networks by bringing on new partners and making connecting journeys more accessible to their passengers. 

A great moment in our year was at the end of May, when we hosted our first ever Dohop Partner Event. It was a great opportunity to bring together our partners from around the globe in Reykjavik to discuss the future of connected travel and find original ways to improve connectivity on a global scale. We were thrilled with the event’s positive reception. The preparations for next year’s event have already begun, so keep an eye out for those invitations!

Dohop has also expanded significantly this year, bringing on 30 new team members both in Iceland and abroad. As of right now, our team consists of 75 individuals based in ten different countries. Fits the bill for a travel technology company. 

A big development that was finalised in the latter months of the year was the appointment of new members to the senior leadership team, with Oana Savu taking on the role of Chief Strategy Officer, Ingunn Svala Leifsdóttir joining as Chief Operating Officer, Olafur Ragnar Helgason taking over as Chief Product Officer, and Sarah Hanan being appointed as Chief Commercial Officer. 

Overall, we’ve had an eventful 2022, and we can’t wait to see what’s next. 

You get together, regardless of who you are and what you usually do, and you come up with new and exciting ideas to make life easier in one way or another.

Our second Dohop Hackathon of the year was held last week. Let me paint the picture:

I’m an early riser, so when I don’t work remotely, I usually arrive at the office among the first. Usually, it is quiet (some days even too quiet in the winter time), and people trickle in between nine and ten o’clock. We do love our flexible working hours. On Hackathon days, the Dohop Hackathon committee is in early, making preparations for the three days ahead. Our everyday hero Hulda brings in brunch, and everyone comes in a little earlier than usual, chatting excitedly about their ideas and making sure everyone knows that their team is going to win this time around. 

The good mood, which is undoubtedly enhanced by the second breakfast, continues all throughout the day, from the kick-off meeting where rules are explained, through the early hours of hacking, all the way to the end of the day, when teams have already made progress on their projects. There is a competitive spirit going around, and everyone wants to present a project that will blow everyone’s mind, which has been previously achieved by a couple of projects, some of which have been taken further by Dohop. In a nutshell, that’s the goal: blow everyone’s mind.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with hackathons in general, allow me to introduce you to a slightly modified format that we have at Dohop every second and fourth quarter. Three days are dedicated to coming up with the above mentioned mind-blowing ideas and developing them to the point where they are functional or fit for use. Teams consist of three people, and they can be anyone from the company, which is great. 

Last time, I was working with a developer and an analyst, people I usually do not get in that much contact with while at work. At the time, we were working on something marketing related, which was completely new for them, but with their fresh eyes, we came up with something that would have been impossible for a group consisting purely of marketers. That’s the beauty of Hackathons: you get together, regardless of who you are and what you usually do, and you come up with new and exciting ideas to make life easier in one way or another. 

Yes, there is a competitive spirit, but at the end of the day, it’s about having a great time. After the project pitches and the voting, we went offsite to a location called Kex for some team-building, the award ceremony, and of course some drinks. At the award ceremony, we ran into a major problem: the trophies were safe and sound, at Dohop HQ. But fret not, the trophies were quickly replaced by half-empty Pepsi bottles, and our winners Arni, Teddi, Daniel, Elisabet, Kari, and Triggvi were just as happy to accept said half-filled bottles as they would have been with any trophy, at least for the picture. That’s dohopping, by the way: being meticulously prepared but able to adapt quickly should something go wrong. 

After the award ceremony, and with the help of pizza and beer, as usual, it fizzes out a bit: people are taking turns on karaoke, there’s a highly emotional foosball match happening, and for some reason Egill, the team captain of team blue, is ridiculously good at riding a mechanical bull that was randomly found in the next room. 

Jetstar Airways is a fully-owned low-cost subsidiary of Qantas. It is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, and operates both narrow-body and wide-body aircraft. Apart from its Australian and New Zealand operation, it operates Jetstar Asia in Singapore and Jetstar Japan in Japan.

Jetstar selected Dohop as the technology provider behind Jetstar Connect, the airline’s connections platform. It launched in 2019 with Tigerair Taiwan as its first partner and has since added new partners such as IndiGo in the summer of 2022. 

Jetstar has been part of the interline community for many years, but usually only one-way partnerships. Other airlines have been selling Jetstar flights, but as a low-cost and a ticketless carrier, Jetstar has not had the capabilities to sell other airlines’ flights. In 2017, Jetstar started looking for a solution that would allow them to sell interline itineraries on jetstar.com. During the discussions between Jetstar and Dohop, it quickly became clear that a self-connect solution like Worldwide by easyJet would not be suitable in Jetstar’s case because they operate in a region where international borders remain, and countries retain their own visa policy. The requirement for customers to go landside at the connecting airport would make the offering a lot less attractive, so the two parties agreed to launch an MVP that seamlessly aligned the offering of each airline, both in the booking flow and during travel.

“The proposition of Jetstar Connect is centred around offering customers seamless connectivity, and that means taking away the hassle of passengers having to collect and re-check their baggage. We want passengers to enjoy their flight journey and have their bags waiting for them at their final destination.”

With self-connect out of the question, Jetstar and Dohop worked together to create a solution that would surpass the usual offering and include luggage through-check.

Dohop made sure that when a booking was generated, both connecting airlines would get access to the full PNR in their respective system and be aware of the entire itinerary. This allows the airline that provides the first flight in a connecting itinerary, be it Jetstar or a partner, to issue the boarding pass for the whole trip. Check-in agents get visibility into all the journey legs and include a luggage tag to the final destination.

Consistency and seamlessness in the customer experience are important to Jetstar so it was crucial that the booking flow on Jetstar Connect would look and feel like Jetstar.com. 

The ancillaries, including luggage offerings, are also aligned between the connecting airlines, so the type of luggage, be it a 7kg carry-on or 20kg checked-in luggage, offered by both Jetstar and its partners is synchronized and reflected on the booking page. When choosing ancillaries for a connection, the passenger chooses only one bundle, which will be reflected on both legs of the connecting journey. 

The flexibility to adjust the ancillary offering to that of Jetstar has been one of the drivers for choosing new airline partners for the Jetstar Connect platform.

“The first criteria we look at when choosing an airline partner is their flying schedule and having a common connecting port. Singapore is a key strategic transfer hub for Jetstar, so we have been focusing on making the transit experience there superior for the customer. Product offering and alignment is key to offering customer choice in how they travel, so the capability of bundling bags, meals and seat selection with that of an airline partner is very important to us. Other technical criteria that makes a partner a good match is the ability to accept credit card payments and relevant currency setups.”

In the future, Jetstar plans to continue to offer the best of both worlds through the Jetstar Connect offering: a customer experience as close to traditional interline as possible, without the associated costs and complexities, adding more airline partners and continuing its network expansion and growth.

“Our goal for Jetstar Connect is to turn it into a well-known platform that complements our Jetstar brand by inspiring more people to travel to new destinations!”

No compromise needed. How Jetstar Connect offers a customer experience close to traditional interline without the associated costs and complexities.

Worldwide by easyJet was launched in September 2017. It allows easyJet to sell connecting flights across their own network and also connections to partner airlines. Initially launched with only two partners, Norwegian and WestJet, the product has grown to include partner airline Aurigny, a regional airline servicing Guernsey in the UK, and international flag carriers such as Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Emirates.

As easyJet’s network has grown, other airlines, especially long-haul carriers, have begun to show interest in partnering with them to provide their customers with access to onward connections from their destinations. This allows easyJet, in turn, to cater to a market they didn’t have access to before without the additional cost and complexity of a long-haul operation.

easyJet is a ticketless carrier with a proprietary reservation system and thus there was no obvious technological solution for how to display and sell connections to a potential partner carrier or even sell connections across the easyJet network. Furthermore, easyJet wanted to make sure that these connections would provide a comparable yield to the point to point flights typically sold on easyJet.com, so ancillaries were a key element to include.

“We have been delighted with the appetite of partner airlines to expand Worldwide across our network thanks to our reputation for great value fares, excellent onboard service and our strong positions at Europe’s leading airports and we continue to broaden our focus to offer this unique connecting service at more of our biggest airports.” says Johan Lundgren, CEO of easyJet.

The first piece of the puzzle is the technology required to surface the additional O&Ds created by combining the networks of two airlines and allowing those to be booked in a single, seamless checkout process for the customer. Dohop’s technology is PSS agnostic which means that any airline can be integrated into the Dohop ecosystem, thus making Dohop the essential layer that connects the two airlines.

Because there are two confirmations being issued by the two airlines for a single connected journey, the key missing link is the protected connection. Normally, a customer with two separate tickets experiencing am inbound flight delay would be exposed to losing their onward connection and having to buy a new ticket. Our protected connection service is provided by our multilingual 24/7 call center, available via phone, chat, and email. In the case of a missed connection, the passenger is provided with a new ticket to their final destination.

At the point of a customer booking, each airline issues their respective confirmation emails to the customer and receives immediate payment for their part of the journey. Both bookings are through the airline’s direct channel and the airlines own the customer relationship. Dohop’s solution also allows any ancillary to be sold during the booking process along with providing full seat maps for both carriers. Dohop also provides the ability to offer a full suite of fare families and fare classes as required.

Dohop’s technology can instantly enable connections over any overlapping points in the networks of two airlines looking to build a partnership. easyJet started by connecting only over Gatwick Airport but now connects at over 170 airports across Europe.

Dohop can facilitate connections to any partner airline or within an airline’s own network. easyJet started by connecting their own flights and also WestJet and Norwegian and now this has been extended to a total of 17 partners.

Distribution is key. Leveraging the airline’s existing commercial agreements with the major global metasearch players, Dohop’s pre-built connection to Google Flights, Skyscanner, and Kayak provides plenty of distribution to the connecting flights.

easyJet’s success factors for expanding their network through the Worldwide offering.

Dohop has raised a multi-million Euro follow-on investment to accelerate growth and continue transforming travel connectivity across the globe

We raised a multi-million Euro follow-on investment to accelerate growth and continue transforming travel connectivity across the globe.

Icelandic technology provider Dohop has raised an undisclosed growth equity round from Scottish Equity Partners (SEP).  This investment will enable Dohop to further accelerate growth and develop its innovative virtual interlining offering, allowing airlines and scheduled transport providers to sell complex itineraries without the need for codesharing or traditional interline agreements. 

Since SEP’s initial investment in November 2020, Dohop has expanded its network of partner airlines by 25+ carriers across five continents, resulting in a network of more than 50 carriers globally, including AirTransat, Vueling, LATAM, easyJet, and many others. The initial investment also enabled Dohop to grow its team by 31% in ten countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Iceland. 

With this new investment, Dohop plans to hire additional international talent and expand its development capabilities to address the unprecedented demand from airlines who are looking to increase their networks and create new connections. The industry, which has historically been constrained by cumbersome traditional interline processes, is now turning to more agile technology solutions in order to offer passengers more choice and convenience when traveling. 

Dohop also intends to continue broadening its partner airline ecosystem and improving travel connectivity through its virtual interlining solutions. The travel industry is showing positive signs of recovery and Dohop has already seen a significant rise in revenue in 2022, with further growth expected.

“Our technology enables partnerships between airlines and offers passengers more destinations and travel customisation. With the support of SEP, our airline ecosystem has grown substantially, and we will continue to connect the world’s leading airlines, airports, and scheduled transport providers across the globe. We are delighted to have SEP’s continued support in our mission to revolutionise travel connectivity.”

“With the easing of global travel restrictions, airlines are keen to expand their networks and distribution capabilities, and we are delighted to provide Dohop, the leading provider of interlining technology, with further funding to address a four billion annual passenger market.”

Dohop is an Icelandic technology company with 17 years of experience in developing innovative solutions in the field of aviation and travel. Dohop’s core technology is focused on helping people to find and create connecting itineraries. Being at the forefront of digital innovation in the field of virtual interline technology, Dohop has developed solutions such as Dohop Interline and Dohop Intermodal for forward-thinking airlines, alliances, and airports around the globe, including easyJet, Transavia, Air France, Eurowings, Vueling, and Air Transat. 

Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) is one of Europe’s leading and most experienced technology growth equity firms, helping founders and management teams to achieve their global ambitions. Providing investment alongside expertise and access to an international network, SEP works closely with the companies it invests in to maximise business growth and value. Previous travel tech investments include global travel search business Skyscanner. SEP is a signatory to the UNPRI, the world’s leading proponent of responsible investment. 

Icelandic technology provider Dohop secures significant further investment from SEP

We are incredibly honoured to have received a nomination for the newly established World Travel Tech Awards for the World’s Best Travel Technology Provider 2021.

As the landscape of travel technology continues to change, our nomination reinforces our vision for innovation in the space of interline for both airlines and customers alike. The past couple of months have been very eventful for us, and we head into the future excited to see what’s next.

Voting has already begun but continues until August 6th. All winners of the World Travel Tech Awards will be revealed on September 10th 2021 in Ufa, Russia.

We’ve been nominated at the World Travel Tech Awards 2021!

The speakers shed amazing insights into how they see Virtual Interline, how their airline adopted the new technology, and how they see such a solution evolving

First of all, we would like to thank everyone who registered and participated in our “Airline Partnerships – the road to recovery”  Webinar on the 18th of March 2021.  

The speakers – airline representatives and industry experts – have shed amazing insights into how they see Virtual Interline, how their airline adopted the new technology, how they see such a solution evolving, and what the main benefits of being a hosting or participating airline in a Virtual Interline platform, both for the airlines and their passengers. 

We were thrilled with the positive feedback that we received from those who participated and the overwhelming interest from those who could not make it but who see great value in watching a discussion on the topic of Virtual Interlining. 

For the latter group, but also for those who did attend and would like to listen in again, we are making the recordings of the webinar available below. 

Panel: Virtual Interline – A Glimpse into the Future

A discussion between Nick Ashton (Head of Alliances, Vueling), Antonio Pascale (Distribution and Alliances Manager, easyJet), Marc Cavaliere (President, AirlinePros International) and Kristján Bjarnason (CTO, Dohop). Moderated by Igor Marchal (CRO, Dohop). 

Panel: The Key Aspects of Customer Success in Virtual Interline.

A discussion by Philippe Le Naour (AirFrance/KLM), Piet van der Heijden (Transavia), Seth Cassel (EveryMundo), Alejandro Gomez Losada (Airline industry consultant), Olafur Helgason (Dohop). Moderated by David Gunnarsson (Dohop). 

Airline Partnerships – The Road to Recovery. Entire Webinar Recording

If you don’t want to miss any of the other sessions that happened during the webinar such as an Intro to Interline by Jon Howell (CEO, AviaDev), the Dohop Interline Demo by David Gunnarsson (CEO, Dohop), or the Q&A at the end of the session where the Dohop team has answered all the questions that have been asked during the webinar, then take a look at the video below. 

Happy Holidays and a joyful New Year from the team at Dohop!

Here’s to a brilliant 2022! Cheers!

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