Travel app offers skittish vacationers 60-day freeze on hotel rates - CNBC

To capitalize on that zeitgeist while helping travelers lock in some of those great hotel prices, travel app Hopper rolled out its new "Price Freeze for Hotels" feature on Wednesday.

If the nightly rate increases during the freeze window, Hopper will cover up to $100 of total stay cost to help keep the rate lower.

"Hotels don't actually take on the risk; Hopper underwrites it," said Anwesha Bhattacharjee, head of hotel fintech at Hopper.

Thanks to leaps in seasonal and domestic travel demand, nightly rates will likely rise 17%, to $165 on average nationwide, by early July, Hopper said.

"As we entered the pandemic, we realized that a lot of our customers were feeling a lot of anxiety around not being able to commit to travel because they didn't know which locations would close down or open up, or what the quarantine rules would be," Bhattacharjee noted.

Price Freeze is particularly helpful for large groups and families planning travel together, when multiple OKs are required on rates before committing to a hotel stay, Bhattacharjee said.

Price Freeze for Hotels is available on both iOS and Android versions of Hopper and anywhere the app operates