Millions of Americans open a travel app looking for one thing: the cheapest flight, with no surprises at checkout.
One of the most downloaded booking apps in the country built its entire brand around that exact promise.
It even said so out loud, in its own marketing, word for word.
Then something appeared below the booking screen that most users never scrolled far enough to see.
The app that made a very specific guarantee to every traveler who downloaded it
The app is one Americans reach for constantly, to track fares, predict price swings, and lock in deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars.
Its selling point was not just low prices.
It was trust, spelled out explicitly: the company marketed itself, in its own words, as “the travel app with no hidden fees.”
That is a bold claim in an industry where surveys consistently rank hidden fees among travelers’ top booking frustrations.
For users already cutting back on leisure spending, and vacation plans are at a six-year low as Americans weigh every dollar, a fee-free promise is not just marketing.
It is the reason you choose one app over another.
What the checkout screen actually showed when users were ready to pay
Here is how the booking flow worked in practice.
A user would search, compare, and settle on a flight or hotel.
They would reach the final screen showing a “total price” and a prominent “Swipe to Book” button.
Until mid-2023, when consumers were ready to purchase their booking, they saw a screen with the “total price” and a Swipe to Book button that failed to adequately disclose that the company would add charges for Tip and VIP Support fees.
These “optional” fees were pre-selected and hidden on an app screen that only appeared if the consumer scrolled down.
Most people did not scroll down.
They swiped.
The internal test that shows exactly why the screen was designed that way
The fees were technically labeled “optional.” That label did a lot of work.
What made the design striking was not that the fees existed, it was what happened when researchers moved them around the screen.
Internal testing showed that whereas 15% of users paid a disclosed and unselected Tip fee, 25% of users paid the fee if it was disclosed and pre-selected, and 75% of users paid the fee if it was hidden and pre-selected.
That is a five-fold jump in revenue produced purely by where a checkbox sat on a page.
According to the complaint, dozens of internal documents showed that Hopper was actively aware of the deceptive nature of these fees.
In internal emails, employees described the practices as “tricking users” and “deceptive UX.”
It is the same psychology behind buy-now-pay-later checkout screens, where a payment split into installments feels cheaper than the full number. Make the cost invisible enough, and most people will pay it.
A $35 million settlement and the $85.6 million the app collected first
The travel app at the center of all of this is Hopper.
On July 2, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission announced a $35 million settlement with travel booking app Hopper Inc. over allegedly deceptive hidden fees.
Although Hopper billed itself as “the travel app with no hidden fees,” the FTC alleged that the popular travel booking app unlawfully charged consumers tens of millions of dollars in hidden, frequently preselected fees.
Internal documents reportedly showed company awareness that these practices were “tricking users,” with the FTC alleging Hopper collected approximately $85.6 million through these questionable fee structures between 2021 and 2023.
The two core charges were a Tip fee and a VIP Support fee.
The VIP Support fee came with its own problem: Hopper told users the paid service would give them near-immediate access to customer service within minutes of requesting it.
Regulators allege many customers who paid for VIP Support either could not reach an agent at all or were forced to wait for long periods of time.
Under the proposed order, Hopper must pay $35 million, which will be used for consumer redress.
The FTC’s official press release confirms the settlement and quotes Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, directly: “Hopper deceived consumers by showing them a total price that did not include hidden, pre-selected fees.”
The FTC alleged that Hopper’s practices violated the FTC Act broadly, and that its short-term lodging practices since May 12, 2025 also violated the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, a rule covering live-event tickets and short-term lodging that became effective that month.
What this means the next time a checkout screen asks you to swipe
Hopper said the FTC’s allegations concerned former practices implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic and discontinued in mid-2023, and characterized the current Hopper app as unaffected by the settlement’s findings, a claim the FTC has not independently confirmed.
But the broader pattern is not going away.
Some travel sellers continue to emphasize low headline fares in search results, only revealing the full cost of bags, seats and other essentials deeper in the flow.
The Hopper case is now the clearest documented example of how far that design choice can go, and what it costs when regulators put a number on it.
The FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, which covers live-event tickets and short-term lodging and became effective May 12, 2025, gives the agency a sharper enforcement tool for those specific sectors.
The FTC has also signaled it will continue to use Section 5, the broader authority under which most of the Hopper case was brought, to challenge non-transparent fee practices in any industry, not just those covered by the Fees Rule.
For travelers, the practical upshot is simple: scroll down before you swipe. The total at the top of the screen is not always the number that hits your card.
