With desire for summer vacations competing with consumer anxiety, travel app Hopper has rolled out a suite of FinTech flexibility products designed to help people save on their trips.
Hopper CEO Frederic Lalonde announced the new products on the company’s website Tuesday (June 7), saying they come at a time when the company’s search demand has grown by 18% since the start of the year.
“And while demand usually rises during the warmer months, searches for domestic travel this summer have grown 50% faster than in the first four months of 2019,” he said. “The surge in demand, rising jet fuel costs and limited capacity are putting pressure on airfare, along with hotel and car rental rates, leading to the highest prices for summer travel we’ve seen in years.”
To help travelers cope with uncertainty, Hopper has debuted two hotel FinTech products: Cancel for Any Reason and Leave for Any Reason.
Cancel for Any Reason, already available for flights, lets customers instantly cancel your stay for any reason up until check-in and get back 100% of your room cost back. If a traveler uses this plan, Hopper pays any fees due to the hotel.
The brand new Leave for Any Reason program lets customers leave their hotel for any reason at or after check-in and book a new hotel of the same star category with the entire rebooking cost covered by Hopper.
The company said it is also launching Price Freeze — a service already available for flights and hotels — for cars. The program “protects customers from pricing volatility by enabling them to freeze prices for up to 21 days.”
Finally, Hopper said it will also offer something called Standalone Trip Protection, which lets non-Hopper bookers add the company’s Flight Disruption Guarantee to bookings made elsewhere. If they need to reschedule a delayed flight, Hopper will cover the fees.
See also: Gas High — But Spirits Higher — as Summer Travel Kicks Off
Hopper’s announcement comes as rising prices are causing many Americans to take more care when planning summer travel.
Late last month, discount app GasBuddy released its outlook for fuel prices on Memorial Day, and noted that even with higher gas prices, more Americans were planning to travel this summer versus last summer.
“While the high prices may not stand in the way of Americans summer travel plans, nearly two-thirds have yet to confirm their plans, with 38% saying that high inflation is leading to difficulty in planning summer trips,” the company said.
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