Guest Post: Amazon Prime Day success highlights potential benefits of subscription model to travel industry

Mike Putman, CEO & founder of CTS, reveals why the reasons behind its success

Amazon Prime Day drives home to business leaders everywhere just how much the e-commerce subscription economy goes from strength-to-strength globally – and unsurprisingly, more and more travel companies are starting to consider how they too can offer subscription services to travelers.

In fact, many travel-related companies already offer — for a monthly or annual subscription fee — either an agreed-upon set of actual travel services such as hotel rooms or even flights or, in the case of intermediaries, some kind of pre-agreed discount and access to exclusive features.

We published a report titled The Age of Travel Subscription outlining eight recommendations on steps on how to make a travel subscription business successful.

1. Business discipline

2. Value and access

3. Low cost of acquisition

4. Recurring income and convenience

5. Market resilience

6. Tailoring benefits

7. Customer service and NPS scores

8. Data retention

We are nearing the end of the beginning of the travel subscription economy now and anyone who’s serious about becoming a player must act quickly to not miss out. 

Fundamentally you’ve got to create a value proposition whose benefits justify – emotionally or economically, both big pulls – paying up to join. 

But once they are in, you lower acquisition costs and increase loyalty. Meanwhile lots of suppliers value highly closed-user groups where they can have greater flexibility on pricing behind the firewall of your subscription.