Hopper Travel App Review

There are a lot of apps out there that claim to help Canadians travel for less. This week, we decided to take a look at Hopper, the most downloaded travel app in North America. It’s a travel app that says they help save money on flights, accommodations, and car rentals. Is Hopper worth the hype? Let’s see.

Booking hotels through Hopper

We started by looking at the first icon: Hotels. The Hotels icon takes the user immediately to a search engine. Here, they can look for cities, neighbourhoods, or specific hotels. We just chose a city to get an idea of how things worked with this app.?

The feature that we really liked in the Hotels section was that it laid out which days were the cheapest. It was colour-coded by price, making it even easier to see dates that might be cheaper.?People waste a lot of time trying to find the cheapest days with the cheapest prices. This app being laid out like so clearly is a real time saver.?

Once the dates were chosen, the site directed us to make more choices about our stay. The options were plentiful! There was a price range slider that went from $38 to $1,200.

Booking flights through Hopper

The first thing to come up with the Flights feature was, naturally, a search button. One nice feature of the search bar was that it autofilled and gave a few airport options, just in case the user isn’t sure what they’re looking for or are unsure of the airport initials.?

They also had a price guide that was colour-coded to show which days were the cheapest to fly. This feature is a game changer when it comes to finding inexpensive flights. Otherwise, people are just left clicking repeatedly to see which days are cheapest, which can be both frustrating and time-consuming.

Renting cars through Hopper

The car search option is similar to the hotel search at first glance. It asks for the dates for the car rental. Unlike the hotel search, the car rental search gives a choice of drop-off and pick up times. There is an additional option to book now and pay later for a car, which can be helpful.?

The filters allow for choosing small, medium, and large cars. There is also a toggle for a price range, similar to the hotel search filters. In addition, it allows the user to filter out for free cancellation only, unlimited mileage, etc.

Renting homes through Hopper

The Homes icon finds home, apartment, and condo rentals. After inputting the place and dates, a map appears with the results and the prices. There is also the option to filter by deals and discounts, price, rooms and beds, bathrooms, the views, and amenities including kitchen, air conditioning, parking, Internet, pool, laundry, air dryer, etc. We discovered that applying too many filters will end up with zero results when it comes to a home search.?

Finding deals with Hopper

The Deals icon gives the user several options for vacation packages in locations that are on sale at that moment. There is also a countdown under each package, letting the user know when each deal expires.? This is a useful option for someone who wants to go somewhere at the last minute, doesn’t have a specific destination, and wants a good deal.?After scrolling down, you see a list of upcoming deals.

Freeze prices with Hopper

This icon allows for the user to do a price freeze on hotels, flights, homes, and car rentals. This is useful for the traveller who can’t or doesn’t want to pay for them immediately. There could be a number of reasons for this, including not having the money ready or needing to solidify plans before paying for it.?

The Hopper Wallet

The Hopper Wallet is a digital wallet is where the user sees how much Carrot Cash they have accrued. What is Carrot Cash? You earn rewards as Carrot Cash, and redeem them for future bookings. Furthermore, if you link a travel credit card to the Hopper app, you’ll be able to accumulate both Carrot Cash and your card’s travel points at the same time.

In-app purchases might give you carrot cash. You are also rewarded when you invite friends to join the app, once the friend successfully installs the Hopper app and claims their reward. Carrot Cash will expire if you do not use it for 6 months. Each carrot unit is worth $1 USD. You can use your rewards for flights, hotels, or car rentals prepaid on Hopper.

Pros of using Hopper

There were a lot of great features to this app.?The feature on the hotels and flights where it shows which dates are cheapest was our favourite attribute of Hopper. This will help travellers save a lot of time and effort.?

The price freeze was another great feature. This allows customers to freeze the price of a booking for a small fee. In most cases, the fee is less than any interim price increase.

The filters offered a lot of choices in amenities at hotels and homes. It was nice because every traveller has different priorities and this allowed them to choose accommodations that only fit their criteria.

We also appreciated Hopper’s insurance products. They truly are stress-free because there are no restrictions, you can really cancel for “any reason

Cons of using Hopper

Like with any app, there are some cons that we found to Hopper.?They claim there’s 24h live support but they are hard to reach. There is a help button in the app but it’s just a general FAQ. They have a phone number so they are still reachable this way if you need immediate help. However, if you prefer live chat, you need to purchase VIP support to get it.

The filters option could use some work. If the user clicks too many filters in a search, no results will come up, even if it’s known that there are accommodations that fit those search parameters.?Also, Hopper is only available for use on newer phones and tablets, making it less than optimal for those who use older devices.?

This article is the shortened version of an article originally published on Hardbacon.ca by Maude Gauthier under the title "Hopper Travel App Review".