Summer 2026 Platform Update

At HTS (Hopper Technology Solutions), we are constantly iterating on our products, rolling out refinements and upgrades – big and small – to our platform and product suite in real-time. Today, in our Summer 2026 Update, we give you insight into those changes by introducing a list of product improvements and launches that have rolled out in the first half of 2026.

Spanning across our full suite of travel tech solutions – HTS Fintech Ancillaries, HTS Commerce, Travel Supply APIs, and HTS Assist, our AI servicing solution – these updates reflect the inherent value of the HTS offering and our dedication to bettering the travel experience for partners and their customers.

I. HTS FINTECH

Today, travel is defined by uncertainty and that reality is shaping behavior before a trip even begins. Flexibility is no longer a nice-to-have offering as travelers around the world signal strong demand for products and services that give them optionality. Products, like HTS’ Cancel for Any Reason and Disruption Assistance for Any Reason, provide a solution to this top traveler pain point. We sell over 2.2 million fintech ancillaries every year, and the products have a repeat purchase rate of 84%. 

GLOBAL LAUNCHES FUEL PRODUCT BENEFITS
Every new market we enter deepens the data foundation for our fintech products, resulting in stronger pricing signals, more precise modeling, and more granular localization. Our H1 2026 expansion across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East creates smarter, more accurate products for our entire partner base.

FIRST EUROPEAN PARTNERSHIP 
The launch of Disruption Assistance on Wizz Air marked the first European airline to integrate our fintech ancillaries, establishing our first European market presence.

CATEGORY EXPANSION INTO HOTELS
Hotels can now unlock new revenue opportunities with HTS’ Cancel for Any Reason. Our industry-leading AI infrastructure, once exclusive to the airline sector, brings premium flexibility to the global hospitality industry.

EXPANDED REBOOKING OPTIONS
Our enhanced self-serve rebooking tool lets customers exercising Disruption Assistance for Any Reason rebook onto flights arriving at airports near their original destination. The platform automatically detects nearby alternate airports and surfaces rebooking options that still get the customer to where they intended to go.

GRANULAR VISIBILITY FOR REFUNDS 
Give travelers real-time visibility into the status of a refund with HTS’ Refund Tracker – view the full process from request to refund, without contacting support. This new feature sits on top of the payout infrastructure and turns the refund process into a self-serve, status-driven experience. 

II. HTS COMMERCE

As AI steers travel commerce into its most consequential transformation in decades, success will be determined by who can monetize loyalty, attention, and service at scale. And the fastest-growing travel businesses are not optimizing the old model; they are reimagining it. 

REDESIGNED SHOPPING EXPERIENCE 
Air Merchandising: Make it easier for users to compare and evaluate what's available with the new air shopping experience. It features a revamped shelving experience that better merchandises fare options across cabin classes, and when paired alongside a streamlined checkout flow, this update reduces friction and gets users from selection to purchase with fewer steps. Partners see a 25% lift in conversion rate.

Accommodation Merchandising: Our rebuilt Stays shopping flow brings a new search results layout, improved price display for clarity, a redesigned map, more comprehensive filtering, and faster property discovery. Partners see a 10% increase in profit per user.

SELL MORE HOTELS WITH NEW API
Initiate cross-sell opportunities and drive incremental hotel bookings beyond the embedded travel portal with a new standardized hotels API for search, rates, and content that surfaces hotel inventory within partners’ own products and experiences.

NEW AIR ANCILLARIES FOR COMMERCE PARTNERS
Create additional ancillary revenue opportunities and a more complete traveler experience with new air ancillaries, including seat selection and baggage purchases available across the HTS Commerce platform.

HOMES INVENTORY LAUNCHES ON STAYS 
Offer your customers broader accommodation options with our new Stays experience, which features access to more than 1 million additional home rental properties. 

MODERNIZED PAYMENT OPTIONS
Integrate localized and alternative payment options faster with our new payment adapter framework.

SELL MORE TRAVEL 
Lodging API: Offer hotels and vacation rental homes in a single integration, available across any online booking tool or booking engine.
Flights API: Give travelers flight booking options from multiple providers, with access to fare rules and ancillaries including seat selection and baggage.

EXPAND HOTEL DISCOVERY WITH LOCATION-BASED SEARCH
Make lodging options discoverable from a single geographic input, i.e. an airport code, city name, or map viewport, with our Geography API.

III. HTS ASSIST

Travelers expect quick resolutions to their inquiries, and they expect those answers to be right. As service volumes grow and customer expectations rise, the partners who win will be the ones who can deliver intelligent, always-on support without compromising on quality. That’s where HTS Assist comes in – our autonomous AI agent that can handle high customer service volumes and deliver customer satisfaction scores at parity with human travel agents.

GLOBAL ROLLOUT
New launches: Our H1 2026 rollout with partners in the Middle East, North America, and South America adds conversational data and regional context that strengthens HTS Assist's accuracy and quality platform-wide.

Accelerated time to market: Streamlined rollout process enables partners to implement full multilingual voice and chat support starting on day one.

HTS ASSIST LAUNCHES FOR CORPORATE TRAVEL
Tailored AI servicing adjusts to meet the needs of corporate travel, including corporate account context, embedded company travel policy, and the ability to distinguish employee vs. travel administrator roles.

OMNICHANNEL EXPERIENCE COMES TO HTS ASSIST
Following the debut of HTS Assist last fall, we launched a unified chat and voice experience,  where travelers can switch between typing and talking mid-conversation without losing context and see dynamic UI for relevant queries. This new UX features a redesigned conversation widget, a cleaner interface, and a new Assist lobby experience.

INTERACTIVE UI BUILT FOR AI
Selection-based interface: HTS Assist can now surface interactive UI cards inside the chat, allowing travelers to tap instead of typing a reply. 

Streamlined greeting flow: Accelerate resolution times with proactive greetings with recommended actions.

Consolidated trip information: Improve overall AI interaction by showing price quote, payment, and baggage information in a single surface.

ENHANCED AI VOICE EXPERIENCE
New AI voice infrastructure: Deliver lower latency and higher reliability with new voice infrastructure purpose-built for real-time AI voice conversations.

Embedded traceability: Improve quality with full traceability across phone networks, AI, and conversation vectors.

Automated AI testing: Catch and resolve issues faster with an automated testing suite and enhanced evaluation framework at every checkpoint.

LANGUAGE OPTIMIZATION FOR GLOBAL PARTNERS
Language diversification: Support global travelers in two new languages – French and Brazilian Portuguese, expanding the number of global customers we can support.

Language detection: Provide language-specific support to all customers from the first interaction with language detection built into the call routing layer.

AI QUALITY ASSURANCE
Segment-level drift detection: Identify problems earlier and maintain a more consistent, trustworthy experience with segment-level drift detection.

More stringent AI benchmarks: We now score conversations on HTS Assist on 17 criteria across accuracy, language quality, engagement, and safety, and leverage multiple independent AI evaluators to ensure service quality for your customers.

Resolution outcome classifier: We’ve eliminated proxy metrics like transfer rate with our new AI model that determines whether a traveler's issue was actually resolved.