If you’ve been intending to plan your summer vacation, it’s about to get a lot easier to get a good deal. Hopper, the airfare search engine, will now send seriously discounted deals directly to your phone via push notifications. “Airlines are offering us really discounted fares that are exclusively available in the Hopper app. They range from 5% to 25% off the publicly available price,” says Hopper’s CEO and cofounder, Fred Lalonde. “These are fares that you cannot find on any other site or app.”
To find the secret fares, follow the rabbit: “You have to be searching and watching a route where they are available,” says Lalonde. “You will see the bunny pop up in special color and it will indicate that a secret fare is available to encourage you to watch it.” If you’re already signed up for Hopper’s push notifications, you’re all set to find these secret fares when they become available, just make sure your phone shows push notifications, which are an integral part of Hopper’s business model. “We send a lot of push notifications–a bit over 2 billion in the past two years,” Lalonde says.
So start watching a route for your dream trip, or let Hopper’s AI guide you to a new destination. “A good 20% of the tickets that we sell today are driven by the AI, meaning you bought something you didn’t originally ask for,” says Lalonde.
And when those push notifications end up on your phone, hop to it. “You can save a ton of money,” Lalonde says, “We think this changes the game.”