Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, CONSUMER PROTECTION NEWS: Hopper agrees to $35 million settlement with FTC over concealed booking fees, (Jul 7, 2026)
Organizations Mentioned:Hopper Inc. | Hopper [U.S.], Inc. | Hopper, Inc.
By Wendy Biddle, J.D.
The travel booking app preselected additional charges and hid them from consumers.
The FTC has resolved its enforcement action against Hopper Inc., a Canadian company, and its U.S. subsidiary, Hopper (USA), Inc., through a stipulated order requiring the companies to pay $35 million and to restructure how they disclose and obtain consent for fees across their travel-booking platforms, the agency announced. The FTC's complaint, filed in the District of Massachusetts, alleged that Hopper's "no hidden fees" marketing was contradicted by a purchase flow that pre-selected optional charges and buried them below the visible screen, and that the company's own internal data confirmed as much (FTC v. Hopper (USA), Inc., No. 1:26-cv-13058 (D. Mass. July 2, 2026)).
According to the complaint, Hopper began as an airfare price-prediction service in 2015 and expanded into full booking services for flights, hotels, car rentals, and vacation rentals between 2015 and 2022. Alongside these bookings, Hopper sold two ancillary products: "VIP Support," a paid customer-service upgrade launched in 2020, and "Price Freeze" (also called "Hold the Room"), which purported to lock in a fare for a period of time, launched in 2019.
The complaint centers on the mechanics of Hopper's purchase flow from 2020 through late 2023. After a consumer viewed a "Total" price and selected "Continue," the app displayed a "Review Details" screen inviting the consumer to "Swipe to Book Flight." Only by scrolling further would a consumer discover that a "Tip" fee and a VIP Support fee, both pre-selected and toggled on, had been added to the transaction. The complaint alleges these fees generated substantial revenue: approximately $18 million in Tip fees and $67 million in VIP Support fees from 2021 through 2023 alone.
The complaint drew heavily on internal Hopper communications. Employees repeatedly flagged the design as deceptive, with one stating in a December 2021 exchange that "the problem here is that we're tricking users." The complaint also cites internal experiments showing that when fees were disclosed and unselected by default, the share of consumers agreeing to pay dropped precipitously. In one 2023 test, Tip payment fell by roughly 90 percent when the toggle defaulted to off. Rather than adopt these more transparent designs, the complaint alleged, Hopper preserved the pre-selected format because of the associated revenue loss, at one point rolling back temporary compliance changes in late 2023 after having briefly suspended the fees.
“Hopper deceived consumers by showing them a total price that did not include hidden, pre-selected fees,” said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC-s Bureau of Consumer Protection in a press release. “The Commission will continue to use all available tools to promote price transparency and to combat unfair and deceptive pricing, billing and cancellation practices.”
Beyond the consent issue, the complaint also alleged additional misrepresentations. First, Hopper allegedly told consumers that VIP Support would connect them to an agent "instantly" or within minutes, when in practice many purchasers could not reach an agent at all or waited substantially longer. Second, Hopper allegedly described Price Freeze as holding or freezing a fare and functioning as a refundable deposit, without adequately disclosing that the price protection was capped at a fixed dollar amount, that a frozen fare could be unavailable if purchased by another consumer, and that the fee had been converted from a refundable deposit to a nonrefundable charge for air travel in 2022 and hotel stays in 2023.
The complaint asserted six counts: unfair charging of fees without express informed consent; deceptive misrepresentations about total price and hidden fees; failure to disclose material terms of the Tip fee; misrepresentations about VIP Support response times; misrepresentations about Price Freeze's protections and deposit status; and, for short-term lodging bookings since the rule's May 12, 2025 effective date, violation of the FTC's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees.
The Commission voted 2-0 to file the complaint and proposed order. Hopper neither admitted nor denied the allegations except as necessary to establish jurisdiction. The stipulated order imposes a $35 million monetary judgment, payable in twelve installments over approximately eleven months, with the funds earmarked for consumer redress. Beyond the payment, the order permanently enjoins Hopper from imposing any fee without first obtaining a consumer's "Express Informed Consent" and from misrepresenting total price, fee terms, refund policies, or the benefits of any good or service. The order further requires that total price be displayed more prominently than any other pricing information, mandates automatic refunds of fees tied to cancelled or unfulfilled transactions, and imposes fifteen years of recordkeeping and compliance-reporting obligations, including production of functional copies of every version of Hopper's applications and records of any material change to the consumer purchase flow.
The Case is No. 1:26-cv-13058.
Judge: Gorton, N.
Attorneys: Karen Mandel for the FTC.
Companies: Hopper [U.S.], Inc.; Hopper Inc.
News: ConsumerProtection FederalTradeCommissionNews MassachusettsNews