They're not planning on hovering as part of their spaceflights...
Fuel is cheap; flight vehicles are expensive. Hovering is the safest way to prove out many aspects of the vehicles, so that's what they do. It's for testing purposes only. Making descents from altitude are, as recently demonstrated, riskier to the vehicle, even if they use less fuel. Many problems which would kill a vehicle during a descent should be non-fatal during a hover.
Gotta take baby steps...
Cheers,
Nathan