Travel metasearch website WayAway has today published a definitive white paper about the travel subscriptions space titled ‘Hit that subscribe button: subscription services in the travel industry’. In addition to creating a formal definition of how to define a travel subscription service and surveying the market to establish the current players in the US, the report also explores the history of subscription services in the travel sector and interviews experts such as Subscription Boom author Adam Levinter and eDreams founder Mauricio Prieto.
WayAway’s Director of PR, Janis Dzenis comments: “The relatively limited research we’d seen into travel subscriptions seemed to vary wildly in what was and what was not classified as either travel or a subscription – nor was much of it up-to-date or taking into account the long evolution of such services from as far back as 2011 when Usingmiles.com introduced the first plan. So we decided to set a baseline definition for the space and map out the universe of current players before conducting any analysis.
“What we found surprised us on two levels, firstly that there’s a lot less travel subscriptions services than you might think – only 49 in the US market. And secondly that so many of these are recent, from just the last few years, indicating a boom with a very clear trend for accelerated growth. We firmly believe that looking back years from now we´ll recognize that now was an inflection point.”
WayAway launched in the summer of 2022 to offer travellers a flight price comparison website with the best rates on airline tickets. As part of its service the company also offers a paid-membership plan called ‘WayAway Plus’ that gives travelers ‘real’ cashback – money transferred into the travellers bank account – for all travel deals.
