Hopper ramps up hotel booking with global private rates and price tracking

Eighteen months on from its initial launch, Hopper is applying some of the secret sauce learned from flights to its hotel search and booking service.

The U.S.-based company says it has over 270,000 hotels worldwide now available to users of its mobile app.

The inventory comes from a number of different suppliers and also via direct relationships with properties in 1,600 cities globally.

The standard online travel agency metrics is not something that Hopper is shouting about with its latest announcement - moreover how it is introducing a number of particular features that have been implemented elsewhere in the company.

A price prediction tool for hotels was first launched in New York as part of a beta test in 2018 - but this has now been rolled out worldwide.

Hopper has tracked historic rates and combined them with real-time pricing to "accurately forecast prices" for its inventory.

It claims users will be able to also secure private rates for properties that are nor ordinarily available online.

Other cheaper prices from package products, member-only, geo-fenced, closed user and pre-purchased block rates are also secured via the app, the company says.

The artificial intelligence-led tech behind the scenes will also learn preferences over time to create personalized recommendations for a user in a destination.

Appliance of science

CEO and co-founder Fred Lalonde says it works with suppliers to "identify the rules associated with each rate type, then using our personalization AI, Hopper only displays rates to each user that the user is eligible to see."

He adds: "Hopper is unique because of its conversational commerce model. We send 600 million push notifications a year and 90% of our sales result from these private push notifications.

"Because we have such strong personalization capabilities, Hopper is able to target private rates and offer users deals that they may not have known they were even eligible for."

Whilst much of the learning from its air product has been used to bolster its hotel capability, Lalonde says the sectors are very different in terms of securing rates for users.

"Unlike airline pricing, there’s much more fragmentation around the types of hotel rates that are out there and this initiative applies to hotel inventory only," he says.

"Because we’re mobile-only, we’re able to leverage our closed, private ecosystem in order to connect users with hotel offers that they may be eligible for.

"Over time, Hopper’s AI will also learn your preferences and send you personalized recommendations about other hotel offers that may be relevant to you.

"It’s at the hotels’ discretion whether they want to offer this type of inventory."

The focus on hotels comes just over six months from its $100 million Series D investment round, led by OMERS Ventures.

The company claims to have surpassed $1 billion in sales during 2018, with more than 40 million downloads of its app.

Combined, some $18 billion worth of flights and hotels are being tracked on annual basis, it says.

* Check out this interview with Lalonde, recorded at The Phocuswright Conference 2018.