Hopper’s New Flex Watch: An AI-Driven Travel Agent

The Montreal-born airfare prediction app Hopper has announced a new feature that tells fliers where they should go on their next vacation.

It’s called Flex Watch, an AI-driven tool that is meant to embody everything a travel agent may do for a flyer: find the best flight deals for a desired trip length during their ideal travelling months to select destinations.

The feature requires users to fill out specific parameters that will tell the recommendation engine how flexible they are and where they want to go—whether that’s a city, country or even continent. The smart travel agent-like tool will pull together personalized travel recommendations, finding the cheapest flights for users.

“If you don’t have a set destination or specific dates in mind, Flex Watch will make recommendations and alert you about incredible flight deals,” said Hopper’s Brianna Schneider in this announcement.

The company said Flex Watch monitors Hopper’s real-time feed of 10 to 15 billion flight prices every day, and the smart tool compares one flyer’s travel preferences with similar Hopper users to gain deeper insights. Hopper claims the data-driven feature can save travellers up to and more than 40 per cent on flights.

“But unlike deal sites and newsletters that flood your inbox with irrelevant deals to destinations you don’t care about, Hopper deals are totally personalized, based on your own preferences and level of date flexibility,” Schneider wrote.

Hopper had to develop and train an algorithm unlike “any previously created before in the travel industry” to create Flex Watch. The Montreal company said the algorithm will learn a flyer’s likes and dislikes, getting smarter on its own over time.

The new feature is already available on iOS devices and will be shortly rolled out on Android.