IEEE Multi-hop relaying is well-known to extend the range of wireless communications. However, the end-to-end performance of the multi-hop relaying channel degrades compared to that observed at the first hop. This performance degradation mainly arises due to i) half-duplex loss and ii) hopping or relaying loss. In this paper, we analyse the degradation in outage probability and ergodic capacity due to hopping loss in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) dual-hop decode-andforward (DF) relaying network over Rayleigh fading channels. In particular, we characterise analytically the performance degradation by deriving closed-form approximations of ergodic capacity and outage probability in the single-source single-relay singleuser, single-source multiple-relay single-user, and single-source single-relay multiple-user topologies. These approximations also provide insights on how to overcome performance degradations due to hopping loss. Moreover, we show that cooperative relaying schemes can recover a significant portion of the hopping loss. Refereed/Peer-reviewed