Hopper cuts staff after co-founder Dakota Smith leaves

Montreal travel-tech company Hopper has laid off employees weeks after co-founder Dakota Smith left the division that generates most of its revenue, according to BetaKit and Skift.

BetaKit reported on Oct. 9 that more than half a dozen employees posted on LinkedIn that their roles had been eliminated. The outlet said it could not determine how many people were cut in total or whether Smith’s exit was linked to the layoffs. Hopper had not replied to BetaKit’s request for comment at the time of publication.

Smith announced on LinkedIn on Sept. 28 that he was leaving. He had led Hopper Technology Solutions (HTS), the company’s business-to-business arm, as CEO for three years. BetaKit said Smith wrote that his last day was in mid-September and that he had no insight into the restructuring. Skift reported on Oct. 2 that Smith gave no reason for leaving and that at least three other employees said on LinkedIn that they had left that week.

HTS supplies data, e-commerce and fintech services to banks, airlines and travel agencies. Skift named Uber, Expedia and the Royal Bank of Canada among its partners. Smith said in 2025 that HTS accounted for 90 per cent of Hopper’s revenue, Skift reported. In November 2024, BetaKit reported that the B2B business made up about two-thirds of revenue, which suggests the company has become more dependent on it.

Skift cited a travel-tech investor who said CEO Fred Lalonde had recently become more involved in HTS, creating “too many cooks in the kitchen.” Another source told the outlet the two-CEO structure was hard to navigate. A top executive at another B2B company told Skift that the departure hurts HTS because the business depends on trust and relationships. Those comments are anonymous or unnamed and Hopper has not addressed them publicly.

The cuts follow a turbulent year. Skift reported that Capital One bought the technology behind Capital One Travel in April 2026, took over supplier relationships and hired about 150 Hopper employees. BetaKit also noted that Hopper has gone through several layoff rounds in recent years tied to partnership changes. In October 2023, the company cut about 30 per cent of its staff, or 250 people. In November 2024, it cut about 10 per cent, or 60 to 65 employees, per Skift.

On the other side of the ledger, Skift said Hopper won RBC’s travel and rewards portal from Expedia weeks before Smith’s departure. BetaKit reported that Hopper also signed a deal to power the bank’s travel rewards program. Skift added that Aven Hospitality was added as an HTS partner the week of its report.

Hopper’s headcount is also unclear. A former technical recruitment manager, Kamil Eladas, wrote in an Oct. 2 LinkedIn post about scaling to “1,200+ distributed across 37+ countries.” He did not say whether his own departure was tied to the layoffs. That figure includes global staff and cannot be compared directly with the roughly 660 employees BetaKit estimated in late 2024.

For Canadian readers, the story matters because RBC’s travel rewards program runs on Hopper’s technology, and because Hopper is one of the country’s better-known travel-tech companies. No new layoff total, severance details or Canadian job-loss figures have been released. This story is developing.

If you find reporting like this useful, consider supporting Canada News Media, an independent Canadian newsroom with no corporate parent.

Sources: BetaKit, Skift, BetaKit (2024).