Skip to main content
Find a deal Shortlist

How we work

We’d rather you knew all of this before you clicked anything, so here it is on one page with nothing buried at the bottom.

Last updated

What SpeedyHippo is

SpeedyHippo is a holiday-deals guide. We find package deals that are already on sale, read them properly, and write the whole thing up on our own page — the price, what the price is based on, the board, the nights, the transfers, the luggage, what the operator says is included. Then, when you’ve decided, we send you to the travel agent who actually sells it.

That’s the entire product. One page per hotel, with everything on it, so you can make up your mind in a minute rather than an evening.

What SpeedyHippo is not

We are not a travel agent. We do not sell holidays. We have never taken a payment and the site has no way to take one — there is no basket, no checkout, no card form, and none of those things are coming.

We are not ATOL-registered and we are not an ABTA member, because we don’t sell travel. That is not a gap in your protection — see the next section — it just means the protection sits where the booking sits, which is with Hays Travel.

We don’t host reviews and we don’t score hotels. Star ratings on this site are the property class as rated by the travel company, and we label them that way every time.

Who protects your money

The holidays on this site are sold by Hays Travel, an ABTA member and an ATOL holder. You book with them, you pay them, and the protection that comes with the holiday is theirs.

These are Hays Travel’s accreditations, not ours. SpeedyHippo holds no ATOL and is not an ABTA member.

ATOL protection applies to flight-inclusive packages. Check the details on the Hays Travel page before you pay.

What that covers. If the company that organised your holiday fails, ATOL covers the money you paid and gets you home if you’re already away. ABTA membership covers the conduct side — the code Hays Travel books under, and a route to arbitration if something goes wrong with the booking itself.

Why none of it involves us. There is nothing of ours to protect, because no money of yours comes near us. We have never taken a payment and the site has no way to take one. Everything you pay goes to Hays Travel, and everything you’re owed is owed by them. That’s the honest version of “we don’t take bookings” — it isn’t modesty, it’s the whole arrangement.

Where to check it. Hays Travel’s own page for your holiday states the protection that applies to it, and your confirmation will say whether your package is ATOL protected. If it matters to you — and it should — read that before you pay. We don’t quote licence numbers here, because we don’t hold any, and a number copied from memory is worse than no number at all.

Where the deals come from

Right now, every deal on this site comes from Hays Travel. Our software visits their public holiday pages, reads the details they publish, and stores them so we can show you the full picture in one place.

We do that politely. Our crawler identifies itself honestly, obeys their robots.txt, makes about one request at a time with a pause between them, and never touches a booking, enquiry or checkout page. If you run a site and want to know more, the details are on our crawler page.

In future we’ll add other travel companies through affiliate networks. When we do, every deal will still say whose deal it is, on the card and on the page.

How often we check prices

Prices are the part of this that goes out of date fastest, so we treat them carefully.

All prices on this site were checked in the last 24 hours. That’s not a figure of speech. We refresh from Hays Travel every day, and a holiday is only shown if that refresh actually found it. When a holiday comes off sale at their end, it comes off ours the same day rather than sitting here looking available. That’s the mechanism behind the claim, and it’s why we can state it plainly instead of hedging it.

Every price also carries the time we last checked it. Not “updated recently” — the actual time. If a price is more than 48 hours old we say so next to it. If it’s more than seven days old we stop showing the number altogether and send you to Hays Travel for today’s figure, because we’d rather show you no price than a wrong one. In practice you shouldn’t see either of those, and if a refresh ever fails, the 24-hour line comes down and you see the real time of the last check in its place, rather than a claim we can’t stand behind.

Even a price we checked an hour ago is a snapshot. Holiday pricing moves with availability, and the number you see on Hays Travel’s page is the one that counts. That’s not a disclaimer — it’s the honest reason the click-through exists.

If you spot a price on our site that doesn’t match theirs, there’s a Report a wrong price link on every deal page. We re-check those the same day.

“Trending” is decoration on most sites. Here it is a calculation, and these are the inputs:

  • Price drops — how far a deal has fallen against the lowest price we’ve held for it in the last week. This is the biggest single factor.
  • The saving the operator states — measured as a share of the price, so a £136 saving on a £289 holiday counts for more than £200 off a £3,000 one.
  • What people here are viewing — page views over the last week, weighted towards the last day or two, with bots filtered out.
  • How new it is — deals we’ve only just seen score higher for a fortnight, then stop.
  • Click-throughs — how often people who read a deal go on to check it at Hays Travel.
  • Value against similar deals — how the price compares with the middle of the market for the same country, length and board basis.

On top of that, a few rules keep the module honest and readable. Only one deal per hotel. No more than two per country. Every price has to have been checked in the last 24 hours — which, given the paragraph above, all of them have. Departures have to be at least a week away. And we can pin at most two deals by hand — when we do, they’re labelled Editor’s pick, every time.

Commission is not an input. No deal is ever ranked higher because it pays us more, and we don’t sell placement in this module. If that ever changes, it will say so on the module, in words, before you click anything.

What happens when you click through

The button on a deal page says Check price on Hays Travel, and that is exactly what it does. It opens Hays Travel in a new tab, so our page stays where you left it.

On their side you’ll see the live price for your dates, your airport and your party — and that price may differ from ours, in either direction. You can book there, or not. Nothing is committed by clicking, and we don’t collect anything from you at any point: no email gate, no sign-up, no card details, ever.

How we make money

We’re paid a commission by Hays Travel when someone clicks one of our links and goes on to book. That’s it. That’s the whole business model.

  1. We list the deal
  2. You click through
  3. Hays Travel takes the booking
  4. They pay us a commission
  5. Your price is unchanged

Three things worth spelling out.

It doesn’t change your price. The commission comes out of Hays Travel’s margin. You pay them what you’d pay walking in off the street or typing their address in yourself. We have no exclusive rates and no discount codes, and we’d tell you if we did.

It doesn’t change what we show you. Which deals appear, and in what order, is set by the rules above. Commission isn’t one of them.

You’ll always know before you act on it. There’s a line about it directly beneath the button you’re about to press, one in our footer on every page, and one on the deal listings themselves. The one under the button is the one that matters, because that’s the moment it’s actually relevant to you.

The full version is on our affiliate disclosure page.

Who to contact about what

A booking you’ve made — changes, cancellations, payments, protection
Hays Travel. They hold the booking; we have no access to it and can’t act on it.
A price on our site that looks wrong
Us, via Report a wrong price on the deal, or [email protected]
Something broken on this website, or an accessibility problem
Us, at [email protected]. Our accessibility statement sets out how quickly we aim to reply.
Working with us, or listing your deals here
[email protected]

The short version

We find the deal and explain it. Hays Travel sells it. They pay us. You pay the same either way.

Anything unclear?

Tell us at [email protected]. We’d rather fix it than argue about it. Anything about a booking — changes, cancellations, payments, protection — goes to Hays Travel, because they hold the booking and we don’t.