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Hopper: Hotels, Flights & Cars

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Hopper: Flights, Hotels & Cars 4+

Spend less, travel better‪.‬.

• #42 in Travel
• 4.8 • 1.1M Ratings

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The Hopper app has helped over 100 million travelers find and secure the best price on flights, hotels, homes and car rentals - each and every time they book their trips. Book Flights, Hotels, Homes & Rental Cars Find millions of flights, hotels, homes, rental cars (and cute bunnies) – all in one app. Book your trip safely and securely, in just a couple taps and a swipe. Always Get the Best Price You can watch a trip right in the app and we’ll send you a notification when it’s the best time to buy — recommending you to book now, or maybe wait just a little longer. Easily Find The Cheapest Travel Dates Simply search your preferred destination and use Hopper’s color-coded deals calendar to easily find the cheapest travel dates for your trip. Not Ready to Book Right Away? Hopper lets you freeze the price, so that you never miss a travel deal. For a small fee, take the time you need to finalize your plans, or wait for your next paycheck to come in. If the price goes up, you only pay the price you froze it at. But if the price goes down, you just pay the lower price. Travel with Confidence Avoid fees and frustration! Make any trip flexible with Hopper’s Cancel and Change for Any Reason plans. Get instantly rebooked without extra costs if your flight is delayed or you miss a connection with Hopper’s Flight Disruption Guarantee. Travel stress free with 24/7 access to Hopper’s Customer Support. Help the Planet, One Booking at a Time. With every booking that occurs on Hopper, we pledge to plant 2 trees to offset the carbon footprint. To date, we’ve planted over 31 million trees. Hopper has no ads, no spam, and no stress — just accurate predictions and travel deals. So what are you waiting for? Start saving money with the bunny today. Download Hopper for free now, and let’s start planning your next trip! Hopper Love • “The 10 Best Free Apps for Air Travel Junkies” - TIME • “The Most Downloaded OTA in the U.S. in 2021” - Apptopia • “The app helps travelers find the cheapest flights, hotels and rental cars.” - The Points Guy • “Compared to exact searches on Expedia, Kayak and Orbitz, we regularly found that the deal quoted on Hopper was the best” - Travel and Leisure • “Hopper can be a better option than direct booking for those who need more flexibility.” - The Wall Street Journal • “Find me a hotel on Hopper!” - The Late Late Show with James Corden • “Travel Unicorn Hopper First Came for Expedia. Airbnb Is Next” - TechCrunch • “Hopper is committed to offsetting the carbon emissions of every flight and hotel stay it sells.” - Forbes, The Top 100 Most Customer-Centric Companies of 2022 Say Hello to the Bunnies Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hoppertravel Instagram: @hopper Twitter: @hopper Website: http://www.hopper.com Need support? Head over to https://help.hopper.com to find answers to frequently asked questions. You can also reach us toll-free at +1-833-933-4671 if calling from US or Canada, or at +1 (347)-695-4555 if calling from outside the US or Canada.

Version 7.57.1

Bug fixes and UI improvements.

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Editors’ Notes

Next to losing our luggage or someone crushing our knees with a reclined seat, our biggest source of travel anxiety is paying too much for a flight. Simply enter a destination into Hopper, and the app quickly scours the Internet for the best deals, giving you an easy-to-understand snapshot of fares, ideal travel dates, and even when prices for your flight are likely to rise and fall. You might end up saving enough money for a knee-pleasing seat upgrade.

Not Even the employees will match these low rates!

We recently had a house fire and had no choice but to stay in hotels. With us being a family of 5 suites seem to suit us best and hopper came through every time with the lowest rate of all 3rd party hotel apps and sites. Rate do change constantly but that’s what makes it kinda fun. I find that 2AM I can get the lowest rate of the day , although that’s not always the case. Not only that but on top of fire car broke down and Hopper had great deals for a rental for the week. They are always posting cheap flights and housing or hotels for a vacation or in my case ended up finding an apartment to stay in short term till we got are ducks in a row for the next step of are journey. I have never had a problem with them personally or had to call because they made a mistake. Just be careful when booking rooms that your reading the details correctly or call hotel and double check if you’re unsure what a room type is. For example one time I booked us for a king suite. Thing separate king bedroom and sofa bed in living room….. and we walked in the room there was one king bed. What I should have clicked on was 1 bedroom king suite which had the separate bedroom and pull out couch for the kiddos in living room. All in all Thank you Hopper I couldn’t have found a better site to use in this time of need for my family.

Developer Response ,

It warms our hearts that we were able to come through for you in such a hard time. We sincerely hope that things have turned around since the fire, and that you are able to rebuild or fix what needs to be done and get back in your own home. Thank you for sharing your story with us💞

Loved the App BEFORE..Now, not so much…

I have been using Hopper for over 6 years and when I started, it was one of my go-to apps. I loved how easy it was to navigate and purchase flights right in the app. Now, I can’t spend more than 2 minutes without wanting to pluck my eyes out. It is saturated with things popping up and offers to spin some stupid wheel or win some carrot points. It’s overstimulating to say the least. The interface used to be so easy and fun to navigate. Id spend an hour playing around with different trip ideas but these days I plug what I need and try to get off as soon as possible. 😠 Ux issues aside, the reason I gave it 4 stars and not 3 is because historically the app has been very accommodating to me. The customer service people are top tier and have always helped me out. Like the time I booked a flight in 2021 before the Delta strain of COVID was a thing and I needed to cancel. So Hopper employees helped me fight for my money so I could make use of it a year later. That’s really awesome and I will never forget it. 🤗 While it hasn’t been giving me the flight deals like it used to - and I now have a few other apps I use that seem to give me the same deals - Hopper is still one of the main search apps I use for travel planning. That said, I really hope they redesign it. I’m tired of being harangued by slot machines and carrot bucks and hotels I don’t even want 😠

We genuinely appreciate you taking the time to really tell us how you feel! This is the kind of feedback we need to open our eyes and help us turn the app back into the \#1 go\-to app we strive to be. We will certainly keep this in mind when it comes to updates and changes made to the app. 🙏Thank you.

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How to Use the Hopper App to Save Money on Flights & Hotels

Katie Seemann

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343 Published Articles 49 Edited Articles

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What Is Hopper?

Download the app, create an account, set up a flight watch, hopper hotels, hopper predictions, final thoughts.

We may be compensated when you click on product links, such as credit cards, from one or more of our advertising partners. Terms apply to the offers below. See our Advertising Policy for more about our partners, how we make money, and our rating methodology. Opinions and recommendations are ours alone.

There are tons of different websites out there to help you book your next vacation. You can book directly, through an online travel agency like Expedia , Orbitz , or Priceline, or start your search in a metasearch engine like Google Flights or Kayak .

But how do you know you’re getting the best deal? The Hopper mobile app is a bit different because it offers predictions to help you find the best time to book. They’re so confident in their app, they claim 95% accuracy!

In this post, I’ll walk you through booking a flight and hotel, plus we’ll take a closer look at how Hopper predictions work.

Hopper is a mobile app that helps you book flights and hotels at the right time to save you money — claiming 95% accuracy, up to 1 year in advance.

How to Use Hopper

The first thing you need to do to use Hopper is to download the mobile app. Hopper is NOT available for desktop computers.

Go to the App Store or Google Play to download the app.

You can search for flights and hotels on Hopper as a guest, but you must create an account to make a booking.

To create an account on Hopper, go to the Trips icon on the bottom of your screen. Then click Log In/Sign Up.

You’ll be required to enter your name, email address, and phone number. Once you do that you’ll receive a verification text with a link to finish creating your account.

If you need to make any changes to your information (or want to change your bunny icon!) click on Trips then click on the pencil icon near the bunny.

Hot Tip: You must be on a mobile phone to create your Hopper account — it won’t work on a tablet.

Hopper Flights

The Hopper mobile app is simple and straightforward to use.

You can set up a watch on a particular flight after you’ve selected the flight. Just click Watch This Trip after your search. You need to allow for push notifications to set up a watch.

All of the flights you’re watching will be visible by clicking the Watch icon in the bottom, left-hand corner.

Hot Tip: Don’t forget to use a credit card that earns bonus points on travel purchases! The Chase Sapphire Preferred ® Card  is one of the best overall travel rewards credit cards on the market — and travel purchases made with this card will earn 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar!

Chase Sapphire Preferred ® Card

A fantastic travel card with a huge welcome offer, good benefits, and perks for a moderate annual fee.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred ® card is one of the best travel rewards cards on the market. Its bonus categories include travel, dining, online grocery purchases, and streaming services, which gives you the opportunity to earn lots of bonus points on these purchases.

Additionally, it offers flexible point redemption options, no foreign transaction fees, and excellent travel insurance coverage including primary car rental insurance . With benefits like these, it’s easy to see why this card is an excellent choice for any traveler.

• 5x points on all travel booked via the Chase Travel portal
• 5x points on select Peloton purchases over $150 (through March 31, 2025)
• 5x points on Lyft purchases (through March 31, 2025)
• 3x points on dining purchases, online grocery purchases, and select streaming services
• 2x points on all other travel worldwide
• $50 annual credit on hotel stays booked through the Chase Travel portal
• 6 months of complimentary Instacart+ (activate by July 31, 2024), plus up to $15 in statement credits each quarter through July 2024
• Excellent travel and car rental insurance
• 10% annual bonus points
• No foreign transaction fees
• 1:1 point transfer to leading airline and hotel loyalty programs like United MileagePlus and World of Hyatt
• $95 annual fee
• No elite benefits like airport lounge access or hotel elite status
• Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 when you redeem through Chase Travel℠.
• Enjoy benefits such as 5x on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 3x on dining, select streaming services and online groceries, 2x on all other travel purchases, 1x on all other purchases, $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit, plus more.
• Get 25% more value when you redeem for airfare, hotels, car rentals and cruises through Chase Travel℠. For example, 60,000 points are worth $750 toward travel.
• Count on Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance, Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver, Lost Luggage Insurance and more.
• Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2024.
• Member FDIC

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• APR: 21.49%-28.49% Variable
• Foreign Transaction Fees: None

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In addition to flights, you can also use Hopper to search for hotels.

Hopper’s claim to fame is that it can predict the right time to book a flight with up to 95% accuracy .

To do this, Hopper has a team that developed an algorithm to analyze the millions of data points they collect every day. The algorithm looks at pricing trends to predict what flight prices will do. The result, they claim, is that you know the best times to make a purchase to save money.

Once you sign up for notifications about a route, you may not receive notice of every price change. Hopper won’t notify you of small price changes or about a price change that you’ve already seen (they can track what prices you’ve seen in the app).

You’ll get a notification when price changes drastically or when Hopper predicts prices are about to rise.

Hopper claims 95% accuracy on their predictions. So while they may be right most of the time, they don’t have the answers all of the time. Because of this, their price predictions aren’t guaranteed .

You can buy a ticket during their recommended time and the price could still go down afterward.

Bottom Line: Hopper doesn’t offer a low price guarantee or price matching. They do, however, claim 95% accuracy in their flight cost predictions. If you set up a watch on the Hopper app, they’ll notify you when they think is the right time to buy.

Hopper isn’t like other online travel agencies. First, Hopper is exclusively a mobile app.

This app claims to be able to predict flight price trends with up to 95% accuracy. They base their predictions on an algorithm they developed that analyzes historical flight price information.

It’s a straightforward and easy to use app. It doesn’t have many of the bells and whistles of some other booking websites, but they offer simplicity and a great shot at purchasing your flight or hotel at the right time and lowest price.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the hopper app.

The Hopper app is a mobile app that helps you book flights and hotels at the best prices. Based on Hopper predictions, they’ll send you notifications to let you know the best time to make your purchase. These predictions are only a guide — they don’t guarantee the lowest prices nor do they offer a price match guarantee.

Is Hopper only an app?

Yes, Hopper’s flight and hotel booking capabilities are only available through their mobile app. The app will also let you set up watches to keep an eye on the prices for your trip, and will notify you of their prediction of the best time to buy.

Are Hopper predictions accurate?

Hopper predictions claim to be 95% accurate. The algorithm they use is based on millions of historical data points and tries to predict the best time to purchase a flight or hotel so you can save money. However, their predictions are not guaranteed.

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About Katie Seemann

Katie has been in the points and miles game since 2015 and started her own blog in 2016. She’s been freelance writing since then and her work has been featured in publications like Travel + Leisure, Forbes Advisor, and Fortune Recommends.

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How to Use Hopper to Save Money on Flights

Jessica Spiegel

August 6, 2023

10 min read

Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time researching and tracking airfare knows that even after you click the “buy” button you can’t help but wonder if you really got the best deal. That post-purchase worry is exactly what Hopper is built to relieve.

What Is Hopper?

Hopper is an online travel agency (OTA) and app that tracks the cost of airline tickets, car rentals, and hotel rooms over time to give users a historical analysis of whether the current price is above or below the typical fare for a given date. The data is also used to predict the best time to book—Hopper claims a 95% accuracy rate.

The Montreal-based company was founded in 2007 by Frederic Lalonde and Joost Ouwerkerk, both of whom formerly worked for Expedia.

How Does Hopper Work?

Hopper pulls prices on air tickets, hotel rooms, and car rentals from elsewhere on the web (such as airline sites for airfare, OTAs for hotel rooms, and rental car companies for cars) so you can find the lowest price. That’s where the system stops for room rates and car rentals, but with flights there are a few more steps that make it even more useful for budget-conscious travelers.

Once Hopper has all the airfare data, the algorithm compares it to historical data for the same routes and dates to let you know how the fares you’re seeing compare. Then, Hopper offers predictions about whether the ticket price is likely to go up or down in the future and even suggests when the best time to book will be (this is where they claim the 95% accuracy rate up to one year in advance). You’ll be notified via the app when the price is right and then you can book directly through Hopper.

Unlike other OTAs, Hopper limits its full functionality to its app. The website features price information and booking capabilities only for hotel rooms, while the app offers that information for hotels plus flights and car rentals.

The Hopper App

While hotel information is available on the Hopper website, to get the best user experience you need to get the Hopper app. It’s available for both iOS and Android devices.

Once you’ve downloaded the app, you’ll see a series of screens explaining the app’s basic functionality. On the second screen, tap the “Notify Me” button in order to get push notifications of price changes on anything you want to track.

You can search for prices without having a Hopper account, but you must create an account in order to actually book anything. Tap the person icon in the upper left-hand corner of the screen and then the “Sign Up or Log In” prompt to create an account and “choose your bunny.”

The app asks for your cell phone number and sends a verification text with a link. Tapping on that link brings you back to the app, where you can finish creating your Hopper profile.

And, yes, that includes choosing your bunny avatar. ‍

Note that if you ever sign out of the app, you’ll need to repeat the verification text process to log back in.

How to Use The Hopper App to Book Cheap Flights

On the main screen of the Hopper app, tap on the “Flights” option.

Enter the departure and arrival airports, and edit the number of travelers (if necessary).

On the next screen, you can edit the preliminary search to be a one-way flight (the default is round-trip). You can also tap on the “Filters” button to avoid “basic economy” tickets and limit the number of layovers.

The Hopper flights search results are in a colorful calendar format, with green dates being the best deals and red being the most expensive. There are even two shades of yellow/orange to indicate more gradations on the cheap-to-expensive scale.

For more details about Hopper flights, choose the month you want to look at by tapping on the month name. The larger version of the calendar you’ll see next lets you tap on departure and return dates.

If you’re happy with the travel dates, tap on the “Select These Dates” button at the bottom of the screen. Once the bunny has finished its calculations, the next screen includes a whole bunch of information.

The “current lowest price” is in big, bold lettering—and this price may include a discount based on any “Carrot Cash” you have available. (See below for more details on Carrot Cash.)

Underneath the bunny, you’ll see a note about price predictions. In this case, Hopper is suggesting we wait to book this particular flight but that we should book before January 27th. For added emphasis, the word “Wait” is in a little gray box next to the same listed price at the bottom of the screen.

You’re automatically set up to be “watching” any trip you search for this way; you can scroll down to deselect “Watching” if you’re not ready to do that yet. There’s also an option to “Watch with your travel buddy”—AKA send this Hopper flight info to anyone you might be planning a trip with.

Note that sending this information to your travel buddy means they’ll also get notifications about price changes.

Keep scrolling to find more details about Hopper’s price predictions. For this example, Hopper says that airfare on this route will change over the next seven weeks and be as much as $139 lower than it currently is. Then, after January 27, the prediction is that fares will go up by at least $128 from the current price.

When you’re ready to look at flights in more detail, tap the “View Flights” button at the bottom of the screen.

The first flights you’ll see are for the outbound flight. You can scroll to see all the flight possibilities or filter for a specific fare class at the top of the list if you’re only looking for (for instance) Premium seats instead of Basic seats.

Hopper lists the cheapest flight first (“Cheapest” and “Best Flight” are in green boxes in our example), with other descriptors assigned to other options on the list—including “Fastest,” “Best Quality,” and “Best Refundable.” If there’s no cost to change the ticket, that’s listed in a blue box that says, “$0 Changes.”

Select the outgoing flight you want and then you’ll see more fare options with various amenities at different price points.

After choosing the fare class you want, you’ll see all the details about that outbound flight. If it’s still the one you want, tap “Select This Outbound.”

Then, you’ll repeat the same basic process for your return flight.

The next screen shows a synopsis of the flights you just chose, the cost per ticket, and any “Carrot Cash” savings you’re getting. You can then choose to do a Price Freeze (details below) or tap “Continue” to book the flight.

Hopper offers add-on options for things like travel insurance for missed flights (if there are multiple connections on an itinerary), instant refunds on flight cancellations, and flight change guarantees.

Finally, you’ll get more detailed information about each flight, including whether seat selection is an option, how many carry-on bags are allowed, what a checked bag will cost, and the charges for things like changes and cancellations.

The next step is to add the traveler information for each ticket. If you already entered traveler information from the “Settings” screen when you created your profile, you can select those travelers and automatically apply their details to the tickets you’re booking. If not, you’re prompted to add a new traveler—including frequent flyer numbers and Redress Numbers or Known Traveler Numbers (if applicable).

Later, when you want to check on any flights you’re watching, tap the notification bell icon on the upper right hand corner of the main screen to see the whole list.

When you create an account with Hopper, you automatically get some Carrot Cash—basically credit that can only be used on Hopper—in your Hopper Wallet. You can see details about what’s in your Hopper Wallet by tapping on the carrot icon at the top of the main screen.

Additional Carrot Cash is earned with each hotel or flight booked through the app and can be used toward anything booked through the app (flights, hotel rooms, and car rentals).

Carrot Cash does expire, though the expiration dates vary depending on the promotion. You can see exactly when each reward expires by scrolling through the offers in your Hopper Wallet.

One of Hopper’s unique features in the flights department is the “Price Freeze” option.

Let’s say you need a little more time to make a decision about a flight, but you’re concerned that if you don’t book right now the price will go up. With Price Freeze, you put down a deposit based on the ticket price to lock in that price. In our example, the deposit is $65 per ticket.

If the cost of the trip increases, Hopper will cover the difference up to a certain amount per ticket. The limit varies with the cost of the ticket; in this example it’s $100 per traveler. If the cost of the trip decreases, you’ll pay the lower price.

The key here is that these Price Freeze deposits are nearly always non-refundable, even if you decide not to book the flight. (Exceptions include if your flight is cancelled or tickets get sold out.)

Hopper’s Price Freeze gives you a certain amount of time to use the deposit toward the cost of that airline ticket. The time allowed varies—here we’re given a 20-day window in which to book this ticket.

Note that Hopper chooses an itinerary for you with Price Freeze. You can change it by tapping the “Change” option.

Even if you don’t use the Price Freeze option, Hopper has another product—Price Drop Guarantee—that can be really handy if the cost of a ticket goes down after you purchase it.

If Hopper’s algorithm recommends you book a flight today and you do, the Price Drop Guarantee is automatically added to select tickets for free. For ten days after you make an airfare purchase based on a Hopper recommendation to buy, Hopper continues to monitor the cost of the exact ticket you bought. If the cost drops, you’ll get the amount of the price difference in Carrot Cash.

How to Use The Hopper App for Car Rentals

On the main screen of the app, tap “Cars.”

Enter the location where you want to pick the car up. It could be an airport, but you can also type in any address or simply a city or neighborhood name to get started.

Returning the car to the pick-up location is the default, so if you plan to make a one-way drive and need to drop off the car at a different place, be sure to uncheck that box.

Once you enter the pick-up location (and drop-off location, if applicable), the next screen is a calendar so you can choose the dates you need for the Hopper car rental. Unlike the flights calendar, this one doesn’t have color-coding that reflects prices.

Tap on the date you want to pick up the car, then the date you want to drop the car off. Then, tap “Choose Dates.” ‍

The next screen asks for the pick-up and drop-off times and the driver’s age.

You’ll then see the list of cars you can choose from. Narrow down the search by things like car size, price range, transmission type, etc. by tapping the “Filter” button.

As you saw with flights, the results page for Hopper car rentals highlights perks with a given deal in green—such as “Free cancellation” and “Unlimited mileage” with the first item on this list.

Browse the list until you find the car you want to rent. Tap that list item to see all the booking details.

If you have not entered traveler information into the Hopper app already, you’ll need to do that under the “Driver Information” section. There are also options for insurance (which you can decline). There are a couple of things at the bottom of the screen that contain all kinds of fine print, so it’s a good idea to read through the details on the “Important Information” and “Booking Conditions” pages before you book the car rental.

Many car rentals don’t require any payment before you pick up the rental car, in which case you don't need to enter payment information. If you choose a car that does require some kind of deposit, you’ll be prompted to add payment information under the “Confirmation” heading.

Keep in mind that if you added payment information into the app from the main “Settings” page, that’s what Hopper pulls into the payment section—so if you plan to use a different form of payment, be sure to change that before you make the reservation.

Carrot Cash can be used toward Hopper car rentals, just like it can for flights. If you have Carrot Cash in your Hopper Wallet that can be used toward a car rental, you’ll see a note to that effect at the top of the list of search results.

How to Use The Hopper App for Hotels

On the main screen of the app, tap “Hotels.”

Enter a location for where you want to stay. You can enter a city, a state, a neighborhood, or even a point of interest to get started.

Note that the app default is that there will be two people staying in the room, so be sure to change that before you enter a location.

The next screen will look familiar—it’s the same kind of color-coded calendar Hopper uses in its flight search screens, with green dates being the best deals and red being the most expensive.

Choose your arrival and departure dates and then tap “Choose Dates” to see the search results.

You can filter the search results via the “Filters” button by things like price range, the number of stars a hotel has, guest reviews, and what amenities are available. You can also change how the results page is sorted via the “Sort” button. The default is “Most Recommended,” but you can sort by price, guest ratings, or star ratings.

Tap on the map to zoom into a specific area to look at the hotel options in more detail.

Tap on a hotel to see more details about it, including additional photos, a full amenities list, check-in and check-out policies, and all the fine print.

If you want to consider this hotel but also want to keep browsing, tap the heart icon in the upper right-hand corner of the hotel’s screen to save it to your favorites list.

Tap the “View Rooms” button at the bottom of a hotel’s screen to see what rooms are available, as well as all the details about each of the rooms.

When you find the room you want to book, select the option you want. Depending on the room, you may be able to choose from a lower rate that’s non-refundable or a higher rate that is refundable.

As with car rentals and flights, you may have Carrot Cash that you can use toward your Hopper hotel. If you do, that will be specified next to the “Continue” button at the bottom of the screen.

There are add-ons like trip insurance you can choose (or decline), and then you’ll be asked to add the travelers whose name the reservation will be under. Again, if you’ve already added traveler information into the app you’ll be able to choose from that list. If not, you’ll be prompted to add a new traveler.

Next, you’ll see the screen with all the booking information, each portion of which you can edit. You’ll add payment information here, unless you’ve already saved that in the app.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see a note about how much Carrot Cash you’ll earn with this Hopper hotel booking, and tapping on that note prompts a pop-up that includes details on when that Carrot Cash will expire.

Hopper offers a Price Freeze option with hotel rooms, just like it does with flights. Tapping on the “Price Freeze” button reveals how long the current room rate will be frozen and what your deposit would be, but for the nitty gritty details on the Hopper hotels Price Freeze, be sure to tap the “Terms and Conditions” line.

Hopper App Reviews

The Hopper app has 3.8 stars (out of 5) on the Google Play store with more than 96,700 reviews. In Apple’s App Store, the app gets 4.8 stars (out of 5) and has more than 659,000 reviews.

Some common themes in the complaints are about the customer service experience within the app, especially before a booking has actually been made, though Hopper seems to have replied to every single negative review in both app stores.

Hopper’s Price Predictions

As mentioned at the outset, one of the main draws Hopper offers in a crowded OTA market is its price prediction algorithm. Hopper claims its predictions are 95% accurate, based on historic data collected “ more than one billion individual, real-time flight prices each day .”

In fact, they’re so confident in their algorithm that many flights come with the aforementioned Price Drop Guarantee , which automatically gives you a credit of Carrot Cash if you book a flight on Hopper’s recommendation and the cost of that specific ticket goes down within 10 days.

Still, because the prediction accuracy number isn’t 100%, that also means Hopper’s predictions are not guaranteed .

Hopper’s Cancellation Policy

Hopper has different cancellation policies depending on what you booked, and they’re based on the airline, hotel, and car rental company policies. Cancellation policies are listed in each section before you book or make a reservation.

• Hopper flights : It varies by airline and fare class. Some airlines offer free cancellations within the first 24 hours after you book, although basic economy tickets are almost always excluded from this.
• Hopper hotels : For hotel bookings that are refundable, you’ll be able to cancel the reservation within the app through the “Contact Support” option on the trip details page. If your reservation is non-refundable, you’ll need to contact the hotel directly to see if they’re willing to give you a refund.
• Hopper car rentals : If the car rental you booked has a free cancellation policy, you can cancel the reservation within the app. If there’s a cancellation fee or if the booking was non-refundable, you’ll need to contact Hopper support instead.

Is the Hopper App Legit?

Yes, Hopper is a legitimate company. They have raised $600 million from investors to date and have been around since 2007.

How to Use Hopper with Going

Hopper is great for informing you about price trends and alerting you when prices for a particular route drop. But, like fare alerts you can set on Google Flights and other OTAs , it has its limitations. If you're looking for a deal to Paris and only Paris, you might miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime fare to Chile, and maybe for that price you'd be open to swapping croissants and the Eiffel Tower for ceviche and the Andes mountains.

Going , on the other hand, alerts you any time there's an amazing deal departing from your airport. Additionally, deals we send out can typically be booked directly with the airline, which makes it easier to deal if things go wrong. Though, if you want to take advantage of Hopper's price freeze, after finding out about a deal from Going, you could just...hop (it was too easy) on over to Hopper and use the info from Going to book the deal with Hopper.

Hopper has some undeniable perks, like Price Freeze and Carrot Cash, that can help you save money on hotels, car rentals, and even flights. But we recommend it not be the only tool in your kit for finding the best flight deals.

Hopper FAQs

How does hopper’s price drop guarantee work.

Although Hopper’s predictions are not guaranteed to be accurate 100% of the time, they’re confident enough in their accuracy rate that many flight bookings automatically come with Hopper’s Price Drop Guarantee .

If the ticket you book has the Price Drop Guarantee on it, that means that if you purchase based on Hopper’s recommendation to buy today and the price of that exact ticket drops within 10 days after your purchase, Hopper will give you the price difference in Carrot Cash.

How much is the Hopper app?

The Hopper app is free to download and use. You can download it at https://www.hopper.com/ .  

How accurate is the Hopper app?

Hopper claims its price prediction is 95% accurate for airline tickets.

What is Hopper Carrot Cash?

Carrot Cash is credit you can use toward bookings in the Hopper app. You can earn Carrot Cash on Hopper bookings, and each amount you earn has an expiration date. You can check your Hopper Wallet balance and the expiration dates on various Carrot Cash awards by tapping the carrot button at the top of the main screen.

How to call Hopper

To reach Hopper customer support, they recommend going through the Help Center on the app, which you can find on the Settings page. There is a customer service phone number, however, at their Montreal office. That number is 1-514-276-0760.

How to get a refund from Hopper

Refunds on anything you book with Hopper is “at the discretion of” the airline, hotel, or car rental agency. You can, however, add Hopper’s Instant Travel Refund Promise to any flight you book for a fee during the booking process (it’s basically like a trip insurance add-on). If you choose to do that, you can cancel your trip up to 24 hours before your departure for any reason at all. You’ll get a travel credit with the airline for the full amount of the ticket you originally purchased or a refund from Hopper if the credit isn’t available.

Hopper Alternatives: Other Flight Searching Tools

• Travelocity

Freelance Writer

Published August 6, 2023

Last updated December 21, 2023

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Hopper App Review [2024]: Are The Travel Deals Legit?

Like most people, I was also drawn to the travel deals that Hopper's app offers. There's plenty of hype, but are they legit? I downloaded and reviewed Hopper to find out exactly what their features are, and if they're really worth it!

As a fellow traveler myself, I've fallen in love with travel deals sites and providers that help you cut costs on that expensive flight ticket you need for your trip.

While there are many ways to find cheap travel deals online, I find it can be overwhelming sometimes to decide on the one for you to use!

Just like our review of Momondo or Thrifty Traveler , I'd like to make sure travelers know what they're signing themselves up for when they're looking at cheap flights online. After all, with the tremendous amount of cheap flight offers out there, it's easy to get caught with some that aren't real or are straight-up scams.

One provider, in particular, that’s frequently mentioned in the travel circles is Hopper app. Hopper has made its name in the travel industry, but is it any good? Find out what my take is on this well-known app!

What Is Hopper?

Hopper is an app designed to help you find the best prices on hotels and flights (in fact, their goal is for you to “spend less, travel better”). They focus on predicting fares and nightly rates so you can choose when to travel so it fits best within your budget.

The Hopper app was created in 2015 by Frederic Lalonde, an ex vice president at Expedia. Based in Montreal and Boston, Hopper has since received over 20 million downloads.

It’s only available on mobile apps, but you can easily send the app to your phone using their website! You can download the app on both iOS and Android devices.

The Hopper app saves an average of $50 on domestic flight and $120 on international flights per user, ranking #1 travel app in over 35 countries.

But just because it's the #1 travel app doesn't mean it's the one for you. I wanted to learn a little bit more on what people are saying about the app.

How Does Hopper Work?

If you've seen Hopper's advertisements lately, you're probably wondering the same question I'm wondering: How can Hopper book flights cheaper than I or others possibly can?

I discovered that Hopper relies on several data analytics, machine learning, and computing algorithms to track when a flight, or hotel, might be due for a sale or discount.

Some of the key factors Hopper look at is:

• Seasonal demand fluctuations
• Historical pricing trends

With a bit of data science prediction magic, Hopper claims that they can predict future prices of flight tickets, hotel room prices, or car rental rates consistently with a 95% accuracy. It's a bold claim for sure.

When they find an opportunity for a cheap flight or stay, Hopper will notify you instantly based on your select preferences at the predicted lowest rate so you can book immediately right from your phone.

Huh. Isn't that neat?

I do like that I'm also able to see its price projection charts on a calendar format to be informed of it's predicted pricing fluctuations throughout the near future.

How to Use Hopper App

Hopper flights.

Ever grappled with the unpredictability of flight prices? Hopper Flights is an in-app feature that tries to take away some of that stress.

All you need to do is punch in your departure and destination cities, along with your preferred travel dates, and Hopper Flights scours the internet, analyzing a whole load of flight prices.

It's that easy!

One of its coolest features is a color-coded calendar which aims to give you a bird's eye view of the priciest and cheapest days to fly. Its claim to fame is its ability to predict flight prices with 95% accuracy up to a year in advance.

Of course, it's not always a sure bet, but you can set the app to "watch" a trip and it'll ping you when it thinks prices are about to hit rock bottom. It's a nice touch if you're not in a hurry to book and enjoy playing the waiting game.

Hopper Hotels

Once you've taken a stab at the flights, Hopper doesn't leave you hanging for accommodations. Enter Hopper Hotels. Similar to the flight feature, you let it know where you're headed and the dates, and it sets off to find you potential places to rest your head.

It takes into account your preferences to personalize your search. Whether you're all about that five-star experience or you're more of a budget-friendly traveler, Hopper Hotels tries to find a match.

Like Hopper Flights, it boasts price prediction technology. It tries its best to give you a heads-up on whether it's a good time to book or if holding off might snag you a better deal.

Again, you can use the "watch" feature for your favored hotels, and the app will alert you if prices dip. This feature can be a handy tool in your travel-planning arsenal, especially if you're open to waiting for the best possible deal.

Top Features: Summarized

Not only does the Hopper app help you predict prices of flights, stays, and rentals, they also have some cool features that helps make budget traveling easier than ever.

Here are some of the best features I think you should take advantage of with Hopper:

Booking Options

While Hopper used to only have flight deals, they've since expanded to cover the whole range of travel booking functionalities, which includes hotels, car rentals, and even rental homes.

Hopper's travel deals feature that encompasses flight deals, hotel/homes booking prices, and rental rates allow travelers to look for cheap prices on all parts of their travel. This allows Hopper to compete with the likes of SnapTravel , Expedia, Skyscanner, and more!

Log-In Gifts & Frequent Deals

I'm always on the hunt for travel deals and down to be spontaneous, so this is one of my favorite features!

Hopper rewards you with a welcome cash gift. They'll also reward you if you open the app daily. Yes, you heard me right!

If you're hunting for travel deals, make sure to log-in into Hopper daily to check out some of the travel deals + rewards they're offering. Yeah, I know it's just building more addition to the app, but I'm already addicted to travel, so why not take advantage? 

To give you an idea of what they could offer, my Hopper app is currently showing $135.42 CAD (around $100.48 USD) off Fiji flights to Australia, NZ, and Fiji (my offers only for reference and not an expectation of service.)

Price Freezing

Looking at heavily discounted flight prices but not yet committed? I've been there, too.

Hopper's price freezing feature will helps me here, with a small deposit, I can lock in that travel deal to give me enough time to finally convince stubborn friends and family its time to go travel.

You'll get a full 24 hours for price freeze. After that, you can either forfeit the deposit or book the trip you've been meaning to go!

Carrot Cash

Carrot Cash is Hopper's very own internal loyalty and rewards incentive program.

When you book flights, stays, or rentals through the Hopper app, you'll earn Carrot Cash in return. You'll then be able to stack up the Carrot Cash and use that to redeem for future trips, similar to how many credit cards points system works.

Another cool thing with Carrot Cash is that they do Carrot Cash matching (Limited time offer!)

If you put in $20 in your wallet on the Hopper app, they'll match the $20 you've put in with Carrot Cash. This effectively doubles your cash to $40!

You'll only be able to redeem this for a limited time offer twice per user, so make sure you take advantage of this great deal!

Is Hopper Legit?

The reason you're probably here, you want me to answer: Can you trust Hopper flights, hotels, and car rentals? Are the deals on the Hopper app legit?

Simply put, yes, Hopper is definitely legit. In fact, I was delighted to learn Hopper is an accredited accredited travel agency, which means that the app contains privacy, trust and security measures that makes sure your data and personal information is safe.

I find that if you're traveling on a very tight budget, Hopper can be a great app to scan for cheap flights and hotels.

That being said, many online comments have indicated it’s an app best used to see what the best rates are, and then to book directly with the airlines or hotels themselves. This protects you should anything happen where you need to contact customer service, or should any other difficulties arise. I have also done this a couple times which I'll touch on a bit further down.

And remember there's plenty of other travel deal sites you can check out to expand your options when finding cheap flights.

What Are People Saying About Hopper?

Hopper's app features and how it works all sounds great, but is it actually a great tool or do they fall short, just like all of the other apps out there?

With the service only being provided on mobile apps, it’s important to look at what Hopper's customer service is like before you dive headfirst into purchasing a flight or a week in a hotel through them.

Generally, Hopper is widely positively perceived by millions of its users to be a trusted app available for budget travelers. They'll help you analyze pricing trends so you're able to book the cheapest deals to destinations across the world at your fingertips.

I've discovered that Hopper's not without its flaws, though.

If you have any concerns or problems, you must make any requests directly through your booking on the app. That is the only way to contact the support team directly. This means that you essentially have to make a purchase to speak with anyone, which I find a bit unsettling.

Do note that if you purchase a flight through a low-cost carrier, you’ll need to contact them to manage your bookings.

Cons: What Are the Complaints About?

Hopper reviews have an average rating of 3.3 stars out of 5 from over 2,400 users in public review platforms.

The majority of Hopper reviews either receive an excellent review, or a bad one, so it seems that customers have had very polarizing experiences.

I admit, there have been more positives than negatives for me, but it's fair to paint the entire picture. I'm going to dive into some of the negative experiences some travelers have with Hopper so you can decide for yourself.

Price Freeze Issues

One recurring complaint Hopper receives has to do with the prize freeze feature on Hopper.

Several Hopper reviewers commented that despite paying a deposit to freeze their fare at the low rate they wanted, they were ultimately charged more after returning to pay the remainder of the fare. In my opinion, this is something that feels a bit like a bait and switch. I would prefer to have total confidence in this feature.

Carrot Cash & Low Fares

If these Hopper users then requested a refund, they were only offered Carrot Cash, rather than the money itself.

Carrot Cash is Hopper's internal reward system, with 1 Carrot Cash being equivalent of 1 USD. The downside to getting Carrot Cash instead of real money back is that you'll only have the option to reuse that money within their app and nowhere else.

Another recurring complaint is that Hopper doesn’t offer the lowest fares available and that they won’t price match if you were to find a cheaper fare elsewhere after already booking through them. I tried to contact customer service in this situation and discovered this was the case and it certainly made things very disappointing.

I have even noticed some hidden fees popping up so the fare is actually more expensive than I thought it would be. Many reviewers recommend cross-checking Google Flights, or airlines directly to see how their fares compare, and I would co-sign that recommendation.

Customer Service & Cancellation Policy

Other Hopper reviews also speak to poor customer service, especially in regards to canceled flights.

Unfortunately, Hopper maintains a strict third-party and respects all stringent cancellation policies set by airlines or hotel booking providers out there. This also sometimes mean no cancellation for flights and hotel bookings. It's not they aren't polite, it's just seems sometimes they just can't help you.

Limited Options on Flights

Another downside to using Hopper is that while Hopper's been expanding their platform to encompass most of the travel booking functionalities like stays and rentals, Hopper still does not have all of the flights available for booking on their app.

This means that you'll sometimes find yourself leaving the app just to go back to square one on looking for the right flights with the right deals to book from.

Price Prediction and Fluctuations

While Hopper maintains a 95% accuracy on deal predictions, there's still a chance that predicted fares may not drop. In fact, some users have also seen a rare increase in price while hopper predicted a decrease.

I must stress though that Hopper does not guarantee best prices as it uses technology and prediction algorithms. So while frustrating, this is not a totally unexpected possibility.

Is Hopper Worth It?

While I may have seemed to be back and forth a bit, I wanted to give a full picture of the app. Overall, I definitely think Hopper is worth a try.

Based on the Hopper app reviews, the app has an average rating of 3.8/5 stars on the Google Play Store and 4.8/5 stars on Apple's App Store at the time this blog was written.

The Hopper app functions similarly to their website, offering travel deals up to 40% discount on flights, hotels, and rental services.

You'll also be able to receive personalized recommendations, helpful information on airports and hotels, and compare prices based on specific filters, and even flight tracking features.

However, as I mentioned prior, the Hopper app reviews often mention the lack of a great system for customer support. You can find reviews saying how inconvenient it was to contact customer support through email and receive responses from different agents.

Re-booking is often through email as well, which decreases many users' experience with the app.

Other issues mentioned in Hopper's app reviews are unfavorable travel packages and bugs.

So, is the hopper app just right for you? Sadly, you'll have to make that leap on your own. I think that they're definitely an option any traveler should consider. While there have been many negative app reviews on Hopper, the general consensus is that the app is super helpful and there is certainly a way to use the app as a tool and not the end all be all option.

Out of all the best travel deal sites out there, Hopper remains great at the core of what it does: finding cheap flight deals, hotel deals, and car rental deals.

Given that Hopper is free on both platforms, I recommend you giving it a try!

My Rating: 3.1/5

• Easily search flights & hotels
• Push notifications for routes or dates
• Easily monitor and navigate on app
• Price freeze with non-refundable deposit
• Hard-to-reach customer service
• Not available on desktop
• Fare offered not always the lowest
• No actual cash refunds

General FAQs About Hopper

How does hopper’s price drop guarantee work.

Hopper's Price Drop Guarantee is a feature that allows users to get a refund of the difference if the price of their booked flight or hotel drops before their trip starts.

Once you've made a booking, Hopper monitors prices 24/7. If they find a lower price, they'll automatically refund the difference to your account.

How Accurate is the Hopper App?

Hopper claims that its pricing is 90% accurate.

That being said, Hopper's accuracy largely depends on its complex predictive algorithms which analyze large amounts of data to forecast flight and hotel prices.

While it generally does a good job, predicting price trends in the travel industry isn't always foolproof. Reviews have been largely positive, with users finding the app helpful in planning and saving money on their trips.

What is Hopper Carrot Cash?

Carrot Cash is Hopper's loyalty program. Users can earn Carrot Cash through various activities like inviting friends to use the app or participating in certain promotions.

Carrot Cash can be used towards future bookings made within the Hopper app.

How Do You Call Hopper Customer Service?

Hopper primarily offer customer service through in-app messaging and via email. They didn't provide a direct customer service phone line.

How Do You Get a Refund From Hopper?

Refund policies on Hopper depend on the rules of the airline or hotel you've booked with. If eligible for a refund, you can request it directly through the app.

In the case of cancellations due to extraordinary circumstances, Hopper will work with the provider to try and get you a refund or credit.

What Are Hopper Alternatives?

There are several alternative apps and services to Hopper, such as Skyscanner, Kayak , Google Flights, and Dollar Flight Club .

These services also offer flight tracking and price prediction tools. The best choice depends on your specific needs and preferences.

Does the Hopper App Support Multiple Currencies?

Yes, the Hopper app does support multiple currencies. You can change your currency preference in the app's settings.

This allows for a more personalized and convenient experience for users around the globe.

Pair Cheap Flights & Planning With Pilot!

Hopper is a useful app to research flight fares and nightly hotel rates.

Based on reviews and user experience though, it is best to use it purely as research, and to then go book directly with providers. Sometimes booking with third-party vendors can be a risk, and Hopper is no exception.

Whether you decide to use Hopper for your next trip or not, you should definitely think about using a trip planner. Why not try Pilot?

Disclosure : Pilot is supported by our community. We may earn a small commission fee with affiliate links on our website. All reviews and recommendations are independent and do not reflect the official view of Pilot.

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What is Hopper and How Does it Work for Vacation Rentals?

Top 5 things vacation rental hosts and property managers need to know about Hopper Homes

• Bookings can only be made on the Hopper app.
• Hosts are not charged a commission (or guests a fee). Instead, Hopper asks for a discounted net rate and adds a dynamic markup. Its prices are low for guests and cheaper for hosts than other OTAs.
• It does not hide guest details from hosts.
• According to Hopper, 50% of its users don’t book on other OTAs.
• Gen Z and Gen Y make up 70% of its customer base. It also attracts older and more affluent users through strategic partnerships.

What is Hopper?

Hopper is an accredited online travel agency (OTA) that brings together four verticals - flights, hotels, vacation rentals, and car rentals - into one easy-to-use booking platform. The fast-growing, app-first OTA has gained plenty of buzz for being a one-stop-shop for travelers that not only helps them save on travel bookings by being notified of the best prices available at any given time but also provides fin tech products like price guarantees and rewards. And unlike larger competitors like Airbnb , Hopper has built a reputation for providing good customer support.

Hopper is said to have helped over 75 million travelers. According to Apptopia , it is the most downloaded OTA app in the US and third in the world. It is also the fourth most downloaded travel app in the US, behind Uber, Google Maps, and Lyft. Having raised over $600 million of private capital and backed by some of the largest institutional investors like Goldman Sachs, Hopper looks well on its way to hopping success.

Based in Montreal, Canada, Hopper was founded by CEO Frederic Lalonde and Joost Ouwerkerk, both of whom previously worked at Expedia .

How does Hopper Work?

Hopper aims to be a modern, full-service travel agency that alleviates the pain points of booking your travel itinerary.

It pulls price data – 30 billion price points in real time every day - on air tickets, hotel rooms, vacation rentals, and car rentals from a variety of online sources so it can provide the lowest price.

It uses historical data, comparing the current available price to its previous prices in order to make predictions on how likely the price will decrease or increase in the future. It also provides suggestions on when the best time to book for the best price will be and claims an accuracy of 95% for its algorithms up to one year in advance. Users can track prices of what they are interested in and Hopper will notify them soon as the price changes.

While Hopper does operate a website where deals are visible, full functionality is reserved for the app alone. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices. Hopper allows users to search for prices but they must create an account to make a booking. Creating a profile includes verifying your number and ‘choosing your bunny’ avatar.

What are the Features of Hopper?

Hopper sells bookings across four travel categories, i.e. flights, hotels, car rentals, and vacation rentals, offering customers the best deals to be found online.

1. Hopper Flights

Hopper partners with over 200 airline carriers, monitoring prices in real-time to alert users on the best time to book for the best deal. Hopper Flights is backed by 63 trillion price points and claims to save users an average of $65 per flight booking.

2. Hopper Hotels

Hopper partners with top hotels to provide exclusive deals from over 2 million properties worldwide, saving users an average of $61 per night. Rates are monitored 24/7 and users are notified when it’s the best time to book.

3. Hopper Rental Cars

Hopper Rental Cars features 180 different retail brands from across the world. It claims its rental car rates are 20-25% cheaper and save users an average of $40 per rental.

4. Hopper Homes

Featuring 2.5 million homes located around the world and managed by individual hosts as well as professional property managers, Hopper Home s promises lower prices in even the most demanding markets and an exclusive cash back program.

What are Hopper’s Products?

Carrot cash rewards.

Each time a user makes a booking or refers friends to Hopper, they earn rewards of 5% back on hotels, 3% back on cars, and 1% back on flights.

Price Prediction

Perhaps Hopper’s biggest draw, Price Prediction is the Hopper feature that predicts prices with 95% accuracy, saving users an average of $65 per trip. When a person searches for their trip, Hopper analyzes trillions of price points to provide the cheapest prices as well as provide predictions on prices in the future. If it doesn’t tell you to Book Now, you can choose to Watch the Trip instead and Hopper will notify you when a great deal is available or if prices are starting to climb.

Price Freeze

By choosing Price Freeze and paying a service fee, users can freeze a price for a specific period of time. According to Hopper, it saves travelers an average of $45 per booking.

Cancel for Any Reason

By adding Cancel for Any Reason when making a booking, users can literally cancel their booking sans fees for any reason up until departure. According to Hopper, it saves travelers an average of $214 per use.

Change for Any Reason

By choosing Change for Any Reason on booking, travelers can change dates, airlines, destination, or trip type, for any reason, up until departure. According to Hopper, it saves users an average of $252 per use.

Leave for Any Reason

By adding Leave for Any Reason, travelers can leave the hotel they booked at or after check-in and book a new one for free.

Flight Disruption Guarantee

Users who choose Flight Disruption Guarantee can instantly rebook a flight or receive an instant refund if their flight is delayed or canceled or they missed a connection. According to Hopper, it saves travelers an average of $508.

VIP Support

Travelers who add VIP Support when booking are provided priority service including instant access to expert agents at any time.

What is Hopper Cloud?

Hopper Cloud is its B2B initiative. It is how the company makes its solutions, products, and infrastructure available to businesses such as Amadeus, Kayak, MakeMyTrip, and Trip.com. It also allows other brands to sell their own travel products and content to its customers as white-label offerings.

How does Hopper work for Vacation Rentals?

Hopper Homes, its category for vacation rentals, is the latest addition to its portfolio. It launched in January 2022 with over 2 million properties around the world, a portfolio that has continued to grow since.

To grow its supply fast Hopper directly engaged with large property managers to supply properties. These include but are not limited to Evolve, VTrips, FrontDesk, RedAwning, SkyRun, Kasa, Casago, and Casiola. Hopper also has a partnership with Vrbo , where it taps into Vrbo’s inventory while allowing Vrbo to manage the booking.

Here are the top things property managers and vacation rental hosts need to know about Hopper Homes:

Guests can search properties using filters like location, number of bedrooms, amenities, and even price.

Hopper does not charge a commission from hosts or a service fee from guests. Instead, it gets a discounted net rate from each property and adds a markup to it that is dynamic to ensure that the price is the lowest available while also maximizing its own revenue. This is cheaper for hosts than the 14-17% fees charged by OTAs like Airbnb and Booking.com. It is also cheaper for travelers.

In August 2022, Hopper revealed the average booking value on Hopper Homes as:

ADR - $268 Average order value - $946 Average length of stay - 3.5 nights

In comparison, according to Airbnb’s Q2 2022 results , ADR grew to $164.

Hopper assumes the cancellation policy being used by the host.

Hopper offers instant booking capability.

Hopper does not hide guest details from hosts like Airbnb and Booking.com do.

Property managers can get their rental agreements signed by guests through Hopper itself. Vrbo too offers this feature but Airbnb and Booking.com do not.

As Hopper continues to collect more and more data coming through Hopper Homes and analyzes it to discern patterns in booking, cancellation, etc, it will be able to offer its much-loved fin-tech products like Price Prediction for Homes as well.

Hopper offers its Carrot Cash Rewards for Hopper Homes bookings too.

Hopper claims it has more engaged users than other OTAs. Its app has more monthly active users than any other travel app.

According to Hopper, its users are more loyal: 50% of Hopper users do not book on other OTAs.

While many OTAs rely on Google Adwords to reel in customers, Hopper’s strategy is based on social media such as TikTok.

With its app-first approach, Hopper is known as a Gen Z focused product. And according to Hopper data, the app is primarily used by Gen Z and Millennial females. Nearly 70% of its bookings are from users below 35 years of age.

Hopper recently announced a partnership with Capital One with a separate portal where Capital One customers, who are older and more affluent, can access Hopper Homes.

To list on Hopper Homes, property managers must fill out a short form after which Hopper will get back to them.

Hopper is more than an exciting platform that generates a lot of buzz. Its solutions, products, and service also make it worthy of that buzz.

A disruptor of a market that originated as a disruptor itself, Hopper is combining a fun sensibility, an attractive business model, and a focus on loyalty to provide a striking platform. Despite its reputation for being a Gen Z focused platform and its large customer base of those under 35 years old, it is also going after older and more affluent users through strategic partnerships like that with Capital One, combining old and new customer acquisition strategies. There is even speculation that Hopper will eventually allow bookings on its website as well though this remains to be seen.

Interestingly, younger U.S. travelers prefer short term rentals over hotels, with more than 4 in 10 short term rental travelers being under 35. According to Hopper, 40% of its customers have indicated they prefer homes over hotels while 24% have no preference between the two. This makes Hopper Homes even more attractive to hosts, providing an engaged and enthusiastic base with potential to keep returning. Thus Hopper and Hostaway ’s partnership provides the PMS’ customers access to the award-winning platform while Hostaway provides Hopper with access to a significant market share of short term rentals across North America.

Hopper’s acquisition of PlacePass, one of the largest activity aggregators in the world, saw it make available its over 300,000 experiences in over 800 global destinations through Hopper Cloud. Incidentally, this makes Hopper the engine that powers the Marriott Bonvoy Tours and Activities platform. However, this also provides Hopper a means through which to add experiences as a fifth vertical in the future, competing with Airbnb Experience s, which revealed a gross booking value of $15.6 billion in Q3 2022 .

Ultimately its core strengths are its price algorithms which have thus far lived up to their promise, providing the lowest prices, predicting prices into the future, and alleviating the frustrating pain points of planning and booking travel online and fin-tech products which provide peace of mind and ease of use while catering to the different scenarios encountered with travel. Traditional OTA products like travel insurance for guests are more afterthought in comparison to Hopper’s fin tech suite. In fact, about 70% of Hopper’s revenue comes from these ancillary products than its traditional travel verticals.

While Airbnb pivots to focus on private rooms again while showing a total fee in an attempt to curb its reputation for high prices, Hopper Homes’ model is refreshing for both hosts and guests, particularly the younger demographics who may age into their loyalty for the platform.

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Here's When Summer Flight Prices Will Peak, According to Hopper

Prices may be equal to or even surpass 2023 levels, they are still lower than pre-pandemic in 2019.

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Summer travel is about to heat up, and flight prices may be downright scorching this season.

Flight prices for this summer will peak around $315 roundtrip for domestic getaways with fares starting to rise in May, according to predictions from booking site Hopper that was shared with Travel + Leisure . Peak prices will come at the end of May and early June.

While these prices may be equal to or even surpass 2023 levels, they are still lower than pre-pandemic in 2019, Hayley Berg, Hopper’s lead economist, told T+L. 

“Slightly lower domestic airfares come as seat capacity has fully surpassed pre-pandemic levels and demand for summer travel remains strong among American consumers,” Berg said. “Airlines have achieved higher capacities by adding larger planes on routes rather than adding more flights as they remain constrained on physical supply of new aircrafts."

When it comes to international trips, airfare prices remain higher than pre-pandemic levels to most regions of the world, but not nearly as high as last summer when airfare to Europe and Asia soared to a five-year high . An exception to that is Canada, which is seeing a 7 percent increase in prices compared to last summer and continues to see a 32 percent increase in prices compared to 2019.

Travelers heading to Europe, however, can score flights at $882 — much less than the average $1,167 last summer. 

Beyond high prices, Berg said travelers should prepare for increased travel disruption rates, especially in June, July and August. As a result, Berg said Hopper is increasingly seeing travelers add rebooking services to their trips in case of cancellations or delays.

When it comes to hotels, prices are currently averaging $206 per night, which Hopper said is in line with costs this time last year. 

But while major U.S. cities will always remain popular, Hopper said domestic travelers are searching for “smaller, more off the beaten track cities and towns” this summer, like Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Cody, Wyoming, and Bar Harbor, Maine.

Internationally, Osaka, Japan, is the top trending summer destination , followed by trips to Seoul, South Korea, and Nice, France.

• Skift Research
• Airline Weekly
• Skift Meetings
• Daily Lodging Report

Hopper’s Rise in Travel 2023

Executive summary, an overview and history of hopper, hopper has gained market share , top line growth and segment mix, profitability and cost base, growth driver 1: first principles thinking, growth driver 2: fintech , growth driver 3: hopper cloud, growth driver 4: differentiated marketing strategy, growth driver 5: super app ambitions, modeling future growth trajectory, price prediction , fintech products, related reports.

• India’s Travel Booking Landscape March 2024
• The Past, Present, and Future of Online Travel March 2024
• Skift Research Global Travel Outlook 2024 January 2024
• A Deep Dive into Google Travel Part II: U.S. vs Europe in 20 Charts November 2023

Report Overview

Skift Research has gained unprecedented access to one of the fastest growing online travel agencies (OTAs) in North America – Hopper. We interviewed senior executives across each of Hopper’s verticals, as well as speaking to their co-founder and to their CFO in order to produce a deep dive analysis of Hopper’s rise in travel. Since being founded in 2007, Hopper has become a formidable disruptor of the OTA market, which for so long has been dominated by the duopoly of the legacy players. It has leveraged big data, machine learning algorithms and predictive analysis to launch an array of unique fintech products which have been fundamental in helping it become the third largest OTA in North America.

In this report, we take a deeper look into how exactly Hopper differentiates itself from its competitors and what has fuelled its tremendous growth. Based on our conversations with senior executives, we have also estimated Hopper’s key financial and performance indicators, such as total gross bookings, revenue and marketing spend, as well as modeling its future growth trajectory. Hopper is a private company and much of the data and analysis presented in this report is not publicly available, nor has it been published in such detail before – making this a truly differentiated piece of work.

What You'll Learn From This Report

• The evolution of Hopper’s business strategy and how that has influenced top-line growth and market share gains
• Hopper’s key metrics such as gross bookings, revenue, take rate and segment mix, as estimated by Skift Research
• Hopper’s key growth drivers, such as the launch of its fintech products and Hopper Cloud (its B2B arm)
• Skift Research’s projections for Hopper’s growth trajectory
• Hopper’s unique user acquisition and marketing strategy within the travel industry, specifically its vision of utilizing social commerce as inspired by Chinese app Pinduoduo

Executives Interviewed

• Dakota Smith, Co-Founder & President of Hopper
• Daniel Calderon, Chief Financial Officer of Hopper
• Ella Alkalay Schreiber, General Manager of Fintech at Hopper
• Makoto Rheault-Kihara, Head of Hopper User Acquisition
• Kiera Haining, General Manager of Hopper Flights
• Lexi Caron, Head of Hopper Hotels Marketplace
• Ani Malkani, Head of Hopper Ground Transport 
• Susan Ho, Head of Hopper Homes 
• Hayley Berg, Lead Economist at Hopper

Hopper was founded in 2007. It spent nearly a decade building out a structured database of travel information and price prediction algorithms advising users on when to book flight tickets. In 2016, it changed its business model, deciding to utilize its data-driven approach to not only advise customers on when to buy flight tickets, but also allow them to book on Hopper’s own app.

In early 2019, Hopper launched its first fintech product called ‘prize freeze’ which allows customers to lock in flight prices based on advice from Hopper’s price prediction models. Since then it has launched a whole fintech suite which has materially contributed to top line growth.

For instance, as of 2022, we estimate that Hopper’s total gross bookings are around $3.5 billion which places it at only 3% to 4% that of Booking and Expedia’s respectively – but despite Hopper’s relatively smaller size and the fact that it’s not yet fully at scale, its take rate of around 12-14% (Skift Research estimate) is in line with Booking’s 14% and Expedia’s 12%, largely thanks to the expansion of its fintech products. In the last few years, Hopper has gained significant market share, and in 2021 it was the most downloaded travel app in the U.S. Today, it is the third largest OTA in North America. 

What has fuelled such rapid growth at Hopper and what differentiates it from its peers? There’s certainly a sense that Hopper’s success is comeuppance for the legacy travel industry which in many ways has been held back by outmoded ways of working. Hopper, with its first-principles thinking and desire to address pain points in the industry has allowed it to leapfrog other OTAs through its fast adoption of new systems such as NDCs (New Distribution Capabilities) in the flights business and its differentiated offering of anxiety-alleviating fintech products.

Hopper, not held back by legacy tech systems and contracts, is simply capitalizing on what the long-established players have been too slow to implement. Perhaps even more ironic is that through its fintech suite, Hopper’s monetization of traveler anxiety is in fact a direct product of the unfriendly selling practices, such as “ hate-selling ”, long perpetuated by the traditional OTAs themselves. 

Hopper’s customer-led strategy is an overarching theme that has powered growth drivers for the company, from the launch of its fintech suite which have significantly boosted top line growth and take rates to its social commerce inspired marketing strategy which hopes to increase user engagement and life-time value of customers. Hopper is clearly not afraid to innovate and pivot strategy, as dictated by the needs of its users – and this unique characteristic makes it a formidable competitor in today’s distribution landscape. 

Hopper is an online travel agency (OTA), co-founded in Montreal, Canada in 2007 by Frederic Lalonde (who is the current CEO) and Joost Ouwerkerk, both formerly Expedia executives. 

Prior to launching their website in 2013, Hopper spent several years building out a database of travel information, with its original value proposition being to harness a data-driven approach in allowing better travel inspiration and planning, based on aggregated content from sources such as blog posts and travel reviews. 

In 2014, Hopper changed its business model from content aggregation to flight bookings, utilizing its structured database of travel information and price prediction algorithms to advise users on when to book flight tickets, launching an app based around this in 2015. In 2016, it officially launched as a travel agency, allowing consumers for the first time to use Hopper as a channel to book flights. 

However, whilst Hopper is well known for its data capabilities and utilizing that data to optimize savings for flight bookings, the company’s management, such as co-founder Dakota Smith, quickly realized that “you don’t make a lot of money when you sell air travel alone. The average airline pays a 1.5% to 2% commission and that’s not really enough to even cover the cost of payment processing or customer service.”

Therefore in attempts to expand margins and better monetize its price prediction tools, Hopper expanded its scope from standalone air travel to other verticals within travel such as hotels in 2017, car hire in 2019, and private rentals in 2022, as well as launching an array of fintech products which aid in mitigating consumer anxiety around price volatility and cancellations. 

In 2021, Hopper expanded into the business-to-business (B2B) space with the launch of Hopper Cloud, powering the travel capabilities of keynote partners such as Capital One (which also led Hopper’s latest funding round), Uber, and most recently Australian bank CommBank. Hopper Cloud also provides Hopper’s suite of fintech products to partners already within the travel ecosystem, such as Agoda and Kayak, amongst others. Through its acquisition of tours, activities and experiences provider PlacePass in 2021, Hopper also powers the experiences arm of Marriott’s Bonvoy loyalty program. 

Hopper is also well known for its desire to evolve into a social ecommerce platform and become a travel super app, with its CEO often citing Chinese app Pinduoduo as an inspiration behind this vision. Hopper intends to introduce a gamification element to the app which allows users to collect and spend ‘carrot cash’ – Hopper’s currency for its loyalty program – as a means to bypass traditional marketing spend on search engine marketing, as well as increase retention and the lifetime value of users. This strategy plays to its primarily Gen-Z and Millennial customer base, with 80% of bookers aged 18-35, with an average of 25. 

Hopper is also an app-only platform. Hopper does have a desktop presence, but the website doesn’t allow bookings, instead leading customers to download and use the app. Below we present some screenshots of some of Hopper’s products, such as Hopper flights, Hopper hotels and its price freeze product.

The app is clearly built to appeal to its target audience of Gen-Z and Millennials, with Dakota Smith, co-founder of Hopper saying “We would like to become the defining travel brand for Gen-Zs. And the app has fully embraced that, with the whimsical tone of bunnies and bears, elements of gamification, social commerce, carrot cash as well as our marketing channels of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat all really leaning into that image.”

Since launching as a travel agency in 2016, Hopper has firmly established itself as a popular app for flight and hotel bookings, becoming well known for its price prediction tools and fare alerts. In 2021, it became the most downloaded travel app in the U.S., as shown in the chart below.

Hopper has materially grown its market share of total app usage, from 11% of the U.S. market in 2019 to 19% today, as shown in the chart below.

Hopper’s +8% share gain since 2019 places it as the second fastest gainer of market share, behind Vrbo’s +11%, as shown in the chart below. Vrbo, which is Expedia’s vacation rental brand, likely benefited from the surge in demand for private homes throughout the Covid pandemic, especially for whole accommodations in non-urban destinations which is where the majority of Vrbo’s supply sits. 

The fact that Hopper — which didn’t benefit from the same demand for vacation rentals (having only expanded into Hopper Homes in 2022) — has gained share faster than giants Booking Holdings (which is aggressively expanding into the U.S.) and Expedia (which is likely closest to Hopper in terms of revenue mix out of the major OTAs) goes to show the level of traction it has garnered over the last few years.

Hopper’s Key Financial Metrics 

Over the last few years Hopper has seen enormous expansion, growing its revenue 40x since 2019 – largely due to its evolution from selling solely flight tickets into higher revenue generating streams such as hotels, fintech and Hopper Cloud. In 2022 Hopper made roughly $3.5bn of gross bookings and revenues of around $455m (as estimated by Skift Research, and shown in the charts below). 

Though Hopper is primarily a U.S. focused company, it is quickly expanding internationally, with international users comprising more than 20% of their sales today, versus about 5% the prior year. However, globally, as of 2022, we estimate that Hopper’s gross bookings are only 3% to 4% that of Booking and Expedia’s respectively. Despite Hopper’s relatively smaller size and the fact that it’s not yet fully at scale, its take rate of around 12-14% (Skift Research estimate) is in line with Booking’s 14% and Expedia’s 12% – largely thanks to its fintech offerings. 

Much of Hopper’s growth can be attributed to its expansion of fintech products (rolled out early 2019), as well as the launch of its B2B business Hopper Cloud (launched in 2021)– each making up close to 40% of Hopper’s total revenue today. 

Despite being best known for selling flight tickets, today Hopper’s hotel gross bookings roughly match that of flights (with Hopper reporting that hotel bookings have grown 100x since 2019, selling roughly 2 million hotel room nights annually), as shown in the chart below. Whilst flights and hotels make up a similar share of Hopper’s total gross bookings, as a percentage of revenue, hotels have the larger share due to the much higher take rate available for hotel bookings versus flight bookings. 

Additionally, since launching fintech products in early 2019, fintech has grown to become a significant source of revenue for Hopper, and we estimate that it makes up around 70% of flights revenue and around 45% of hotels revenue. 

This goes to show how Hopper’s expansion into both hotel bookings and fintech has helped fuel growth at the company, with co-founder Dakota Smith saying that “the most profitable segments are fintech and hotel bookings. This isn’t a secret, right? The existence of fintech turns air travel from what is generally a loss maker at other travel agencies into a small profit center for Hopper. That said, people are just as likely to buy fintech on hotel bookings [which offers a much higher take rate than air tickets]. So we still would rather sell you a hotel booking.” 

Hopper likely has negative EBITDA margins today, with focus being on market share growth rather than bottom line profitability. Though it is “gross profit positive on every product” it sells (with fintech products having higher gross profits than travel bookings), Hopper re-invests much of its free cash flow into research and development (R&D) as well as marketing in order to spur growth on the top line and continue gaining market share. Hopper’s co-founder Dakota Smith said to us that, “Hopper has been growing really fast; over the last seven years, we saw a 100% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). That said, we are investing a lot of money into research and development. We have a big team made up of about 500 software engineers. We are letting the products re-invest all of their gross profit back into market share growth, and that is still the priority.” 

According to Smith, R&D is about 80% of Hopper’s operational expenses, with half of their team working on new initiatives that have yet to generate material revenue. Smith explains that “that’s why you see us able to do things like launch new fintech products, but also the entire Hopper Cloud business unit out of thin air in 18 months because we were already positioned with the kind of cost structure to support that kind of innovation. In contrast, at a more mature company that you might see in the travel industry, less than 10% of their operating expenses would be spent on developing and launching new initiatives.” 

Whilst Smith expects R&D spend as a percent of operating expenses to decrease to 30% over the next few years as new initiatives get rolled out, even this level of spend on R&D is non- traditional for an OTA, which would typically invest the majority of its operating expenses in sales & marketing, rather than technology advancement; Hopper’s edge on tech development is a clear differentiator between it and its peers. 

Another differentiator is its strategy around marketing spend. Despite being a young company which is not yet fully at scale, we estimate that Hopper’s marketing spend is only around 2% of its gross bookings, versus 4.9% and 6.4% at Booking and Expedia respectively and 2.4% at Airbnb. 

Unlike Booking and Expedia, that continue to spend performance marketing dollars to acquire traffic from Google – not daring bite the hand that feeds them – Hopper doesn’t list on Google or any other metasearch platform and also gets more of its customers through direct channels (with Hopper receiving 100% of its bookings from its app – having no booking presence on desktop web, for its non-B2B business at least). Hopper instead focuses the majority of its performance marketing spend on social media (appealing to its mainly Gen-Z and Millennial consumer base). 

Hopper is also significantly investing into building out a social commerce platform with a gamification aspect that allows users to collect carrot cash (Hopper’s currency for their loyalty program) on a daily basis such that the app retains consumers until they’re ready to book a trip. This differs from the broad strategy used at Booking and Expedia, which are “buying high intent users ready to book today, and are deep in the funnel of Google search or metasearch.” 

Daniel Calderon, Hopper’s CFO, compared Hopper to Airbnb – which also rarely lists on Google – explaining that “you can think of us long term more like Airbnb – the only other travel app that is single brand and is focusing on demographics also. We should be like Airbnb in terms of sales and marketing.” 

We go deeper into Hopper’s user acquisition and social commerce strategy in a later section of this report. 

What Fuels Hopper’s Growth? 

We identify 5 key drivers behind Hopper’s growth trajectory. They are:

• First Principles Thinking
• Hopper Cloud
• Differentiated Marketing Strategy
• Super App Ambitions

From our discussions with executives across the various verticals at Hopper, one thing which stood out was the data-driven, first principles thinking utilized by Hopper to offer its services. Unlike legacy travel companies which have long been held back by outdated modes of working, Hopper has been able to quickly capitalize on opportunities and technologies which the long-established players have been too slow to implement. Hopper heavily relies on data analysis to address pain points in the industry and respond to consumer desires, such as launching fintech products which help mitigate consumer anxiety and launching Hopper Homes upon realizing that 40% of their customers prefer a private rental over a hotel (with Homes having growing to over 4 million properties since being launched in 2022 – and is in the process of expanding supply). 

Hopper has also been addressing a key pain point in the flight business in particular. It has been heavily investing in first party NDC connectivity (New Distribution Capability, which allows upselling of ancillaries such as seat selection and class upgrades) through direct partnerships with airline providers, which – as we have written in The State of Airline Distribution 2018 – is an area traditional OTAs and corporate travel agents have been slow to implement. For instance, many traditional OTAs still heavily rely on decades old Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), which are based on legacy mainframes that do not have built-in capability to support the vast majority of ancillary and branded fares.

We spoke with Kiera Haining, General Manager of Hopper Flights, who said that “one of the primary goals of Hopper is to make sure we’re able to offer all of that ancillary content, which NDC unlocks for us. We are actually able to drive market leading ancillary attach rates for seat selection for our airline partners and is something we work very closely with airlines in order to achieve, and make sure we’re able to offer, promote and merchandise that content to customers effectively.” 

Hopper’s first-principles thinking and customer-led strategy is an overarching theme that has powered key growth drivers for the company, as discussed in detail in the sections below, from the launch of its fintech suite which have significantly boosted top line growth and take rates to its social commerce inspired marketing strategy which hopes to increase user engagement and life-time value of customers. Hopper with its data driven strategy and technology capability also allows it to be differentiated from the older, more traditional OTAs. This coupled with Hopper’s fintech offering layered across all of its products provides partners and suppliers an alternate avenue to diversify their source traffic and revenue streams, allowing Hopper to be a very real competitor to the giants of Booking and Expedia. 

Before Covid and before the launch of fintech products, the majority of how Hopper made money was similar to that of traditional OTAs – Hopper received a commission per travel booking, with “take rates” ranging from 2% for flight bookings to 5-7% for car hires and 10-15% for hotel bookings. 

In order to lead peers on price – a key reason why Hopper’s mainly Millenial and Gen Z consumers use the Hopper app – Hopper regularly discounts prices and offers the savings back to users in the form of ‘carrot cash’ (Hopper’s loyalty scheme). Hopper’s lead on hotel prices is shown in the chart below, with Hopper likely to be the cheapest option 30% of the time versus only 11% of the time for Booking and Expedia’s app, according to Bernstein. 

By funding these discounted prices Hopper gives up a share of its take rate and we estimate that Hopper’s take rate in 2018/9 was only around 4% – due to both its skew to low take-rate flights bookings and its discounting practices. 

While Hopper still offers discounted prices which carve into its take rate, it has also significantly grown its fintech business — which offers higher take rates than just standalone flight or hotel bookings – and we estimate that Hopper has expanded its take rate from around 4% pre Covid to about 12-14% in 2022.

We spoke with Hopper’s co-founder Dakota Smith and CFO Daniel Calderon who provided a breakdown of take rate by travel segment, explaining that before launching their fintech offering, the take rate from flights was only 2%, but has since grown to 10-12%; similarly for hotels, with hotels take rates expanding from about 10-15% pre-fintech to 20-25% today. 

Hopper’s launch of fintech products has clearly aided in their goal of optimizing long-term value and revenue gains. Its suite of fintech rivals traditional travel insurance – something which has been a standard for decades – but the new offering has innovated on product types and has resonated with Hopper’s consumers. According to Hopper, 50% of their app bookers are attaching a fintech product to their travel bookings, with an average of 1.4 fintech products per travel booking, paying an extra 10% per booking. 

Hopper’s novel fintech offering is helping boost top line growth and market share gains, even if it is less margin accretive than traditional insurance, all in the name of easing consumer anxiety and acquiring high lifetime value users. For example, Ella Alkalay Schreiber, General Manager (GM) of Fintech at Hopper explained that “though we might work on less than half the margin of a traditional insurance fee, we also provide high utility to our customers and make sure that we are building products that our customers love. For example, only about 2% of users would exercise their travel insurance, but about 10% or even higher of customers would exercise on our fintech portfolio. Additionally, traditional insurance comes with a lot of friction – there’s claims portals and a high rejection rate. Our [Hopper’s] acceptance rate is 100%. And it’s all automated. This suggests a new level of service and different level of protection in the travel space – selling products that add real value and that are working with less friction.”

Whilst Hopper’s launch of fintech products have significantly boosted both growth and take rates, it is worth noting the risks that Hopper takes on its balance sheet whenever a consumer exercises the option associated with the various fintech offerings. (See the appendix for a full explanation of Hopper’s fintech products – such as ‘prize freeze’, ‘leave (a hotel) for any reason’ or ‘change or cancel (flight bookings) for any reason’ – and how Hopper utilizes and monetizes its data through fintech). For example, if a consumer decides to buy the ‘leave for any reason’ fintech product when booking their hotel, and upon checking in realizes that the hotel isn’t up to their expectation, they can exercise their option to ‘leave for any reason’. This would see Hopper reimburse the hotel for the original booking, at no extra cost to the customer. Hopper’s ‘leave for any reason’ product differs from the cancellation policy offered by other OTAs in that Hopper enters an obligation to fully reimburse the hotel if the customer decides to leave, whilst cancellation policies place no such obligation for Expedia or Booking to pay out the hotel.

Though Hopper claims its price prediction tools are 95% accurate, and that they dynamically price their fintech products and have sophisticated risk management strategies in place, if there is another black swan event like the Covid pandemic  this could potentially place significant pressure on Hopper’s balance sheet. 

However, Hopper’s CFO is not worried. Calderon claims that “today the risk that we assess is 10 times smaller than the cash that I have in the bank account”, and he sees the fintech products as having a “healthy risk to margin ratio”. The fintech offerings are also fairly diversified and have natural hedges in place, with Schreiber, Hopper’s GM of fintech, explaining that “it’s really hard to think about a time when everyone would want to ‘cancel for any reason’ and at the same time everyone would also want to exercise their ‘price freeze’.” This effectively shows the negative correlation in play between their fintech products, such that by underwriting some products, Hopper can help hedge the risk on others – meaning that whilst the margins of one product might decrease, margins of others will increase. 

There are, however, additional risks on the horizon. Other major players such as Google Flights and Expedia are also launching their own price prediction tools in competition with Hopper, as is Booking which has established its own fintech division. The travel industry is no stranger to highly competitive dynamics, and with new players launching their own fintech products – which, unlike Hopper, are for the most part free, but not yet as sophisticated – we expect Hopper to further invest into fintech and price discounting in order for it to remain price competitive, likely biting into margins and delaying their route to company-wide profitability. 

In 2021 Hopper launched Hopper Cloud, its B2B offering, where it powers the travel booking platforms and fintech capabilities of various partners, such as Capital One, Uber, and Agoda, amongst others. Half of Hopper Cloud’s clients are those already in the travel industry looking to expand the scope of their travel platform or launch a fintech offering, with the other half not in travel currently but looking to become a travel booking platform, such as Capital One. 

According to Hopper’s co-founder Dakota Smith, there are “really active pipelines for both, with two teams internally pursuing the opportunity in both segments.” For example, in the last couple of years we have seen a flurry of activity from financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Revolut, and American Express partnering with OTAs such as Expedia through B2B deals as a means to tap into the aspirational appeal of travel to their customer base.

Hopper Cloud’s partners tap into Hopper’s inventory through a white label site, utilizing Hopper’s Application Programming Interface (API) to power their own booking products. We estimate that these partners likely take 25-40% of commission earned on each travel booking, with the rest going to Hopper. For partners utilizing Hopper’s fintech products, there are likely various contracts in place, with Hopper managing the pricing and fulfillment of exercised fintech products (i.e. Hopper takes the risk of a fintech product being exercised on its own balance sheet, even if it is through a B2B partnership) as part of the service they offer to their clients. 

For Hopper, B2B partnerships allow it to capitalize on the value of its existing inventory and scale its operations with minimal additional costs. Additionally, whilst Hopper’s B2C app mainly targets Millennial and Gen Z consumers, Hopper Cloud allows the distribution of Hopper’s travel agency and fintech products to other demographics, with co-founder Dakota Smith saying “We need to grow up with our user base and retain them through their lifetime as they grow in purchasing power. Along the way, some will drop out, some will become loyal members of other travel programs. Some will go from brand neutral to brand loyal, others will graduate from the mass market and qualify for some of these premier travel credit cards. The strategic idea is that we will be there to meet them because of the loyalty programs or credit cards that they graduate into, hopefully many of them will be Hopper Cloud clients.”

We have talked at length about Hopper’s key growth drivers of fintech and B2B. The fourth arrow in the quiver is its unique strategy around marketing and user acquisition, namely its investment into building out a social commerce platform and becoming a travel super app. 

Not Playing the Search Engine Marketing Game

Hopper spends much less on marketing than peers Booking and Expedia despite being much younger and not yet fully at scale – in 2022, we estimate that Hopper’s marketing spend was under 2% of its total gross booking, versus 5-6% at Booking and Expedia respectively. This is largely due to Hopper spending none of its marketing dollars on Google advertising or metasearch services, which at Booking and Expedia makes up an estimated 60-70% of their marketing budgets. As a result, Hopper receives more of its web traffic organically (as shown in the chart below), and is further helped by the fact that it is an app-only booking platform, receiving 100% of its B2C bookings on the app, versus roughly 45-50% of bookings coming from app at Booking and Expedia. 

We spoke with Makoto Rheault-Kihara, Head of User Acquisition at Hopper, who explained that “One of the reasons we’ve been able to keep our costs a lot lower than our competitors is that we don’t compete at all on search engine marketing (SEM). The traditional travel companies’ growth models are based on bidding on Google for really high intent keywords, trying to convert them on the spot and extract as much revenue from that transaction and then the next time around go through the process again. At Hopper we decided not to compete in that game at all. Instead Hopper has a lot of features like price freeze and flight watches that are meant more for users that are a little bit lower intent but higher in the funnel. We also acquire all of our app installs on channels like Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube, as well as through partnerships with influencers, which are channels that are much lower cost than a pay per click on traditional SEM.”

Investing in Product-Led Growth

Hopper was already ahead of peers in terms of marketing efficiency in 2021 – and Hopper continues to innovate, moving away from social media advertising and instead investing its marketing dollars towards product-led growth and the development of a social commerce platform and super app. 

Whilst paid marketing channels through social media allowed Hopper to quickly grow its app downloads, the focus is now on retaining those customers rather than continuing to attract more downloads. Hopper’s app has been downloaded more than a 100 million times, with Hopper being the most downloaded travel app in 2021, growing app installs near 200% year-on-year from 2020. However it will be difficult to keep up this growth momentum – the U.S has a population of about 330 million, meaning that at 100 million app downloads, a certain saturation level gets hit. Continued paid marketing will not see the same level of returns as before. 

Rheault-Kihara explains that “In 2021 we got a really good amount of installs and we lead travel pretty consistently in terms of the number of app installs that we get. [However], now it’s less of growing installs because we’re up there with Uber and Amazon in terms of total install volume. The next opportunity isn’t in increasing installs by 2x or 3x every year. So we started to look a lot more inwards towards product led growth.”

According to Rheault-Kihara, marketing spend on paid marketing external to the app (i.e. through social media channels) was 80% of Hopper’s marketing spend in 2021, and has today dropped to 25%, as shown in the chart below. 

For example, since April 2021, Hopper has been spending less on buying keywords such as “flights” or “cheap flights” in the app store, giving up these keywords mainly to Expedia, which launched its own flight prediction capabilities in April 2021, as shown in the chart below. Hopper clearly realizes that OTAs such as Expedia are far more experienced in search engine marketing and it would rather not compete head on with companies with much larger performance marketing budgets. Rheault-Kihara says, “We don’t really do that much Apple search; as a percentage of our spend, it’s really low. What we see is there’s not that much search volume and again, it’s usually being stuck to competing head on with our competitors, which we just want to avoid.” 

By investing in product-led growth such as its social commerce mechanisms (explained in the next section) and referral programs, Hopper is hoping that users specifically download the Hopper app looking to use these discount-offering products and for these to become a key value proposition and a core part of the product provided by Hopper, rather than just a marketing tool. 

Interestingly, Rheault-Kihara sees Hopper’s retention focussed marketing strategy as being cheaper on a per customer basis than the in-the-moment conversion approach deployed by the traditional OTAs. For Booking and Expedia, marketing spend correlates fairly linearly with gross bookings (i.e. it costs a certain amount to get every single booking) – instead Hopper is hoping to “get long term conversions, not instant bookings”, which in theory can stretch the initial marketing spend to attract a user over several bookings, extending the life-time value of a customer. 

Hopper has long talked about its ambitions to become a super app in travel, which it hopes to do through its strategy shift towards social commerce.  

Rheault-Kihara explains that “What we’re trying to do is build a super app for travel and we definitely have consumer demand for that. Every time we launch new products, users want to do their entire trip in one app and have rewards that encompass their flights, hotels, car rentals, etc. One of the most interesting examples that we wanted to follow was around these super apps in Asia that figured out how to use the product itself as a main growth lever, instead of external marketing, by giving customers discounts and rewards which incentivizes users to convert and be retained over a longer life cycle.”

Hopper’s CEO particularly cites Chinese company Pinduoduo as inspiration behind this vision. 

What is Pinduoduo? 

Pinduoduo, which in Chinese translates to “together, more savings, more fun”, is a Chinese e-commerce platform which offers customers discounts on a huge range of everyday products from groceries to home appliances. Its core value proposition is to allow users to experience a shared shopping trip with their friends and in turn receive group savings – with the app showing incremental discounts with each additional buyer added to a group purchase. This engineers the sharing of deals on social media, mainly WeChat.

The app also heavily utilizes gamification such as spinning wheels which give out coupons and leaderboards showing which users have had the most number of friends sign up to the app. Additionally, unlike shopping apps such as Amazon, Pinduoduo’s app is built for browsing deals, rather than searching for a particular product, which increases consumer engagement. 

Pinduoduo has seen incredible growth since being founded in 2015. As shown in the charts below, Pinduoduo has grown its revenue at an enormous >150% CAGR from 2016-2022 to become one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms. In September 2022, Pinduoduo launched its U.S. subsidiary Temu, which quickly became the most downloaded shopping app in the U.S.

Introduction Gamification Elements

Hopper has clearly been inspired by Pinduoduo’s huge success, and hopes to implement some of Pinduoduo’s key characteristics such as social sharing, gamification, and viral app design as a means to drive repeat bookings and increase customer retention. 

For example, Hopper is currently working on introducing a gamification component to its app which, similar to apps such as Duolingo, incentivize users to log onto the app every day in order to collect discounts or ‘carrot cash’ which they can use towards an eventual booking. At Skift’s Global Forum 2022, Fred Lalonde, CEO of Hopper, explained: “So the idea is you come in and you do something repetitive in what Google calls micro-moments like waiting for your latte at Starbucks and you press that Claim Today’s Reward button. And if you miss a day, you lose the $10 discount. But if you do it a couple of days straight, in this case a week [as shown in the screenshot below], you get $10 of future booking credit. Duolingo is the only real example of this in the West. Fundamentally this is called engage-to-earn. So you come in and you do something that you would do anyway, so you water this tree and it grows and then there’s a secret chest that opens up and it contains vouchers and coupons. And this is actually what will replace the established eCommerce players in travel, in my opinion.” 

Rheault-Kihara sees this marketing strategy as being more akin to a gaming company rather than a travel company. In our interview with him, he said “We look at an LTV (Long Term Value) to CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) ratio, instead of ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend) like a travel company would, that is more of what we’re interested in because we’re playing that long term game in the same way that a mobile app or a meditation app or an Uber would do.” 

Additionally, the introduction of social commerce and gamification also allows Hopper to hark back to its original value proposition from 2007, of harnessing a data-driven approach in allowing better travel inspiration and planning. Rheault-Kihara explains that “[Social commerce and travel inspiration] are pretty intertwined. When a customer comes onto the Hopper app, unlike a SEM [search engine marketing] customer, they’re not looking for a specific trip or a specific date yet, they’re still pretty high in the funnel in terms of deciding where to go. So a lot of the gamification elements around giving you specific discounts for specific destinations help you choose a place and aids in travel discovery. So [travel discovery] would be a pretty natural extension of the gamification product.” 

Is Hopper’s Super App Vision Achievable? 

Whilst we applaud Hopper’s differentiated marketing approach around gamification, social commerce, and travel inspiration, we expect Hopper will have to go through several iterations before perfecting their product-led growth strategy. For example, recently Hopper has had to answer to concerns that the various add-ons (such as fintech products, controversial opt-out tips , paid VIP customer support – and now a gamification element) are adding unnecessary friction to the booking process. These products can complicate and distract from Hopper’s core value proposition of being the most price competitive OTA on the market and we believe that Hopper has to strike a balance between efficiently monetizing its products whilst also offering a streamlined user experience. 

Additionally, we believe that Hopper faces tough competition in its ambition of being the one-stop-shop for travel bookings. This is a dream shared by many of its peers, with Booking in particular regularly citing its ‘connected trip’ vision. Players outside of travel are also looking to enter the sphere of super app-dom, notably Uber which has forged a B2B partnership with Hopper in order to sell flights and fintech within its own app. The emergence of new players in travel will likely only make the competitive dynamics more fragmented. Whilst Hopper doesn’t intend to sell products outside of travel, it might in fact see the most competition from the likes of Uber (which is primarily known for ride-hailing and food delivery, not travel) rather than pure-play travel companies such as Booking or Expedia. 

Consumer survey data conducted by PYMNTS and PayPal (as shown in the chart below) shows that there is higher demand for a super app in areas of life which sees higher frequency purchases such as retail or groceries, with fewer consumers intending to use a super app for travel purchases.

On stage at Skift’s Global Forum 2022, we asked Hopper’s CEO about how he looks at the issue of travel being a low-frequency travel purchase. He sees their social commerce initiative as the key behind increasing user engagement on the app, explaining “Everyone knows what their next trip is, so instead of scrolling on Instagram when you are waiting in line for a latte at Starbucks – from which you gain nothing– log onto the Hopper app, come water a tree [i.e. engage in its gamification elements], and collect discounts and coupons towards that next trip.” After completing ‘streaks’ (i.e. by logging onto the app every day and ‘watering a tree’ for example), Lalonde expects users to start browsing deals, which due to the discounts collected, are now cheaper than they were before. 

Though we applaud this strategy, we are still wary of how successful Hopper’s – or any travel company’s – implementation of it can be. One reason behind social commerce company Pinduoduo’s immense success is that it sells everyday, high-frequency purchase items such as groceries, meaning that users naturally log on to the app more regularly – and also get addicted quicker – than they would for buying low-frequency purchases such as travel bookings. 

Companies whose main offering is high frequency purchases such as retail, ride-hailing, or banking services might end up being a more formidable competitor to Hopper’s super app dream than one might expect, with the irony being that Hopper itself is helping power the travel platforms of these companies through B2B partnerships. Clearly the dynamics at play are complex, with many stakeholders involved, and we at Skift Research eagerly look forward to seeing how Hopper’s super app dream pans out. 

Hopper made roughly $3.5bn of gross bookings in 2022. Though it has grown substantially since launching as an official travel agency in 2016 – we estimate at a CAGR of near 50% – it is barely scratching the surface of what it could achieve given its current penetration of the TAM (Total Addressable Market) available by travel vertical. 

Hopper is best known for being a flight OTA, but today it has only 0.1% share of the flights market globally. In 2017, Hopper started selling hotels, but at about $1bn of hotel gross bookings, it has only a 0.2% share of the total hotels market. Similarly for car hire and private rentals, where it again has less than 1% market share. 

Hopper’s expansion into fintech and B2B have been key growth drivers for the business, as we have discussed in detail throughout this report, and both segments offer a long runway for growth, with its CEO identifying a $200-400bn TAM available for travel fintech, of which Hopper currently only has 0.5% share, and a TAM of $100bn for Hopper Cloud, of which it has only single digit percentage share. 

In the charts below, we model Hopper’s gross bookings growth trajectory, benchmarking its performance to that of Booking, Expedia and Airbnb 10 years after their respective launches. In 2022 (i.e. in the 15th year post Hopper’s founding in 2007), Hopper overtook Booking in terms of year-on-year gross bookings growth, largely fuelled by its launch of Hopper Cloud and expansion of fintech products. Based roughly on Booking’s growth pattern and our conversations with executives, we model that Hopper can reach more than $10bn of gross bookings by 2025 and $20bn by 2030. 

We model that Hopper can grow its gross bookings from about 1.5% of Booking and Expedia’s combined gross bookings in 2022 to more than 5% by 2030. 

Hopper has seen immense success in just a few short years, from selling its first flight booking in 2016 to becoming the third largest player in North America today. This growth has been fuelled by its approach around fintech, B2B partnerships, and a differentiated marketing strategy.

Hopper is still a young and burgeoning company, not yet fully at scale, meaning that the company is likely to see several iterations before undergoing a potential IPO, such as learning to strike a balance between efficiently monetizing its products whilst also offering a streamlined user experience.

However, regardless of whatever doubts someone might have, one thing for sure is that Hopper has been a redoubtable disrupter of the OTA market, unafraid to pivot strategy and innovate – a unique characteristic in today’s landscape which for so long was dominated by the duopoly of legacy players. 

Appendix: How Do Hopper’s Fintech Products Work?

Since being founded in 2007, Hopper has been building a database of travel and flights information by archiving receipts, or “echo traffic”, sourced from global distribution systems (GDS) and using this data to feed their price prediction tools. 

Hopper’s lead economist, Hayley Berg, explains that “anytime an online travel agency sends out a ping to the GDS, looking for all the flights available to be booked at that moment, the various itineraries, the prices, etc. – it’s called an echo event – and we have been archiving these events since 2007 to create a database that is made up of about 80 trillion historical prices and itineraries. And every single day we get the previous day’s itineraries, which we call shadow traffic, and this is the data that feeds into our machine learning models and is what fuels the price prediction in the app.” 

Hopper claims that their price prediction tools are 95% accurate. For hotel prices, due to the fragmented nature of the hotel industry, and a lack of a centralized database, Hopper bases its pricing estimates on what’s already available to book in the app. 

Through Covid, Hopper expanded its price prediction tool into a price freeze fintech product, as well as launching an array of other fintech offerings (explained below), and today fintech sales make up about 70% of flight bookings, 45% of hotel bookings and 15% of car bookings. 

Hopper has 5 key fintech products: 

Price Freeze – Price Freeze protects customers from pricing volatility by enabling them to freeze prices. For an upfront fee, the Price Freeze product will protect you against price increases, up to a specified amount, for a flight for a set time. It allows customers to take more time to finalize their plans before they book. We do note that sometimes Hopper will pay the customer out in the form of ‘carrot cash’ – the currency for its loyalty program – rather than an actual cash refund. Price Freeze is available for flight, hotel and car bookings. 

Change for Any Reason – This plan gives you the power to change your flight, including date, time, and airline, for any reason up until the time of your scheduled departure with no added fees. If a traveler ends up utilizing this plan, Hopper pays any fees due to the airline.

Cancel for Any Reason – Available on flights and hotels, this plan gives you the power to instantly cancel your flight for any reason up until the time of your scheduled departure and receive at least 80% your ticket cost back. If a traveler ends up utilizing this plan, Hopper pays any fees due to the airline or hotel.

Flight Disruption Guarantee – If your trip is delayed or you miss your connection, you can instantly rebook the next flight to their destination in the app – no matter the airline – at no additional cost.

Leave for Any Reason – With this product, you can leave your hotel for any reason at or after check-in and book a new hotel of the same star category at no cost (with 100% of the rebooking costs covered by Hopper).

'Expensive in every way': What travelers should expect this summer

Summer travel in 2024 will be "expensive in every way," said Katharine Nohr. And she should know.

She's planning a two-week adventure to Europe in June, which starts with a marathon flight from Honolulu to Zurich, where she'll speak at a conference. Then she's hopscotching across Europe – to Vienna, then on to the Olympics. Nohr made plans to be in Nantes, France, to watch a soccer game, in Lille for basketball, and in Paris for gymnastics, boxing and swimming.

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All told, it'll set her back five figures despite her best efforts, which include flying economy class and staying in the lowest-priced hotels. 

"The trip is pricey, even with my efforts to economize," said Nohr, an attorney from Honolulu. "But it's a once-in-my-life adventure." 

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Summer travelers are pursuing exciting, expensive vacations

Nohr is part of a wave of travelers who are making big plans for this summer. The itineraries are exciting – and expensive. 

Pretty much every barometer of travel intent is up for the summer travel season. Inflation and unemployment are low, and consumer sentiment and curiosity are high, fueling an unprecedented interest in travel. 

"Bookings are rising," said Susan Sherren, who runs Couture Trips , a travel agency. "Unfortunately, hotel, tour and air prices are not falling. So if you plan on hitting the road this summer, make sure you are willing to splash some cash."

Travel companies say they're overwhelmed with summer reservations.

"The travel economy is booming," said Joe Ialacci, owner of Yacht Hampton Boating Club , a company that rents yachts in Sag Harbor, New York. He's seeing a 40% increase in rentals this summer compared with last year as Americans shift some of their vacation dollars to domestic destinations.

Prices aren't the only thing trending higher. People's expectations for their summer vacation are also higher than at any time since the pandemic, said Sangeeta Sadarangani, CEO of Crossing , a multinational travel agency headquartered in London. 

"They're embracing the unknown," she said.

And one of the great unknowns is travel prices. How much higher will they be?

What will prices be like this summer?

It depends on where you're going. There's good news if you're traveling within the U.S.: Flights and hotels are a little less expensive than last summer . But they're rising elsewhere. Here's the breakdown:

• Airfares are mixed. Domestic round-trip airfares for summer will peak at $315 a ticket, according to the travel platform Hopper . Flights to Europe are cheaper, too. They've fallen 10% from last year to $882. But flights to South America are up 2% and flights to Canada have risen 7%. You'll pay an average of $708 to fly south of the border and $419 to head north.
• U.S. hotel rates are down. Domestically, they're about the same as last year at an average of $206 a night.
• Car rental prices are rising. Average domestic car rental rates are up only 3% this summer to $42 a day on a four-day rental, according to Hopper. 

But you can avoid the high prices with a little strategic planning, experts say.

What to avoid this summer

American travelers are becoming more predictable in their summer vacation choices, said John Lovell, president of Travel Leaders Group . Immediately after the pandemic, they embarked on "revenge" vacations to far-flung locations. Now they're returning to more conventional vacations.

"We continue to see U.S. travelers heading back to the more traditional locations across Europe this year, like London, Rome, Athens and Munich," he said.

There are places that will be exceptionally busy – and exceptionally pricey – this summer.

• Paris during the Olympics. The Olympic Games are in Paris this summer. Rooms are more than double the normal rates , which is typical of the Olympics. Paris is already crowded with tourists during the summer, so you can probably imagine what it will be like with the Olympics. Zut, alors!
• Taylor Swift is touring Europe this summer. Prices will be higher and the crowds will be denser. "If you aren't planning to attend one of her concerts, I recommend planning around those European cities when she's there," said Betsy Ball, co-founder of Euro Travel Coach . (Want to know if your schedules overlap? Here's Taylor Swift's concert schedule .)
• Other big summer events. Even if you steer clear of Taylor and the Olympics, you're still not out of the woods. There's the UEFA Euro 2024 football tournament in Germany in June. There's the Tour de France in July, which begins in Florence and finishes in Nice. France is also hosting the Paralympic Games in August and September in Paris, Nice, Marseille and Bordeaux.

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When is the best time to book a 2024 summer vacation?

Because this is going to be a busy season, the sooner you book, the better. Hopper recommends buying your plane tickets two to three months before your departure for domestic flights, and for international – well, it's probably too late to get that rock-bottom fare. If you're reading this in April, you can still find something for late August or early September, according to its airfare experts.

As always, you can save money by booking a flight for midweek instead of on the weekend – and, of course, by keeping far, far away from the big travel holidays like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day. 

Also, if you're going overseas, remember the holiday calendar is different there. For example, half of Europe shuts down in August for summer vacation. It's worth a look-up, otherwise, you could face some real disappointments.

Strategies for traveling better during the summer

One tactic that consistently works is splitting your getaway into two sections. Take that required summer vacation with your family somewhere less expensive during the high season. Then, wait until shoulder season for the big trip. 

That's what Ross Copas, a retired electrician from Tweed, Canada, is doing during the summer of 2024. It's a road trip across the northern U.S. by motorcycle – New York to Washington state, and then back east through Canada. 

Then he's heading to Amsterdam in September for a 23-day European river cruise. He said the late-summer getaway will be costly, but he doubts fares will fall anytime soon. "So price be damned," he said.

Actually, that's pretty smart. I took the same cruise on Viking River Cruises many years ago, and it was worth every penny.

With hotel rates rising in some places this summer, this is the right time to consider alternatives. Monica Fish, a writer from Glen Rock, New Jersey, is headed to Ireland to catch one of Taylor Swift's performances. She said hotel rooms in Dublin are overpriced, if they're even available. But Fish found an affordable vacation rental. 

"We just had to book it farther in advance than we normally would," she said. 

Go ahead, follow the crowds this summer

I think it's fine to follow the crowds this summer. I'll be doing it. I'm planning to rent an apartment for a month in Switzerland with Blueground, a long-term apartment rental company. Then I'm crashing on a friend's sofa in Spain, then heading to Sweden to see other friends and visiting my brother in Finland. Yes, travel writers know people everywhere . 

But don't follow the crowds off a cliff. There are places even I won't go. I might take the four-hour train trip from Zurich to Paris in June to check out my favorite patisseries, but I wouldn't go anywhere near the City of Lights during the Summer Games in July unless I made a reservation a long time ago.

And Taylor Swift? Puh-leeze. I'm more of a jazz guy.

Christopher Elliott  is an author, consumer advocate, and journalist. He founded  Elliott Advocacy , a nonprofit organization that helps solve consumer problems. He publishes  Elliott Confidential , a travel newsletter, and the  Elliott Report , a news site about customer service. If you need help with a consumer problem, you can  reach him here  or email him at  [email protected] .