Travel on our mind
Travel Portals & More
PI-360 Connect
Travel is back with a vengeance & competition for consumers' share of spend is at its peak.
Toward the end of 2023, 79% of U.S. consumers were planning to take an overnight trip for vacation or business, the highest levels since the pandemic.
As part of our ongoing data collection, we continue to gather structured product reviews on every major travel portfolio in U.S., answering critical questions such as:
- What are the best mid-tier and premium travel credit card offers in market?
- What drives acquisition and usage for top performing offers?
- Of all the recent innovation in travel benefits from Chase, Capital One, and Amex, which strategies resonate most?
- Does AI introduce an opportunity for enhanced travel card benefits?
- What non-travel benefits are essential in a premium travel credit card?
In the news: TFG insights referenced by Jacob Passy at The Wall Street Journal.
Read the full article: The Tricky Math Behind Booking Trips on a Credit Card Company’s Travel Site
The article looks at the biggest driver of travel portal dissatisfaction: perception that cardholders are not getting the best price possible.
Here is our detailed take and the "So What" for issuers:
To an extent, travelers expect to see varying prices, and that is one of the reasons why comparison shopping in this space is so prevalent.
However, for issuers, every instance when a credit card travel portal presents a higher price for a hotel, or a flight, is a risk to cardholder loyalty that needs to be managed carefully.
Think of it this way, you’ve been banking your points in anticipation of a family vacation.
Finally, it’s time to book.
You visit your bank’s travel portal, check the hotel that you are dying to visit and realize that the available room is 20% more expensive than what you would pay if you booked directly with the hotel.
At this moment, you have a choice…
Do you use your points to pay for the room? OR
Do you book directly with the hotel?
Both options present a challenge for the issuer.
If you used your points, there is a good chance that you are feeling let down by the experience, and the fact that you did not realize the full value of your hard-earned rewards.
If you opted to book via a hotel, you may also feel a degree of resentment realizing the limitation of your rewards.
In both instances, there is a real risk to card usage and retention.
The only way to manage this is to focus on 3 pillars:
- Continued optimization of the travel portal (options, pricing, etc.)
- Product innovation (price comparison tools, enhanced protections, dynamic reward and redemption boosts, etc.)
- Customer service innovation (creating new ways of addressing concerns, training and empowering reps, etc.)
Oh, and business travel is back as well.
If you need any convincing, take a look at this offer for the Capital One Venture X Business card.
Who remembers the heady days of Chase Sapphire Reserve launching with an unheard off 100K intro offer back in 2016?
Well, here comes Capital One with a 300K LTO for the Venture X business card!!!
Now, just for comparison, American Express is offering 120K points on the $695 Business Platinum Card.
Venture X Business is a $395 annual fee card.
At some point, the numbers speak for themselves!
Is there a catch? Well, yes. This is targeted to mid-to-larger small businesses.
Cardholders will get 150K after spending $20K in the first 3 months, and another 150K when they spend $100K in the first 6 months.
This is smart marketing, and smart product design.
Yep, travel is back.
As always, if any of the above topics are top of mind in your discussions, we have unique data and are here to connect if you have any questions.
Your TFG Team
About pI-360 Payments Intelligence
A proprietary platform that maps and analyzes the entire competitive landscape through the lens of ongoing and structured consumer reviews. Imagine knowing everything that you need to know about your competitor's products, emerging innovation, and what matters most to consumers, without waiting for research.
About PI-360 Connect
Whether we have worked together in recent past, or you have inquired about our data, we want to make sure that we keep you updated on our progress and the various Payment trends, topics and data that we are adding to PI-360. If you see something of interest that aligns with your ongoing discussions, or if you would like us to consider a topic that we should add, please don't hesitate to reach out.
About pI-360 Payments Intelligence
A proprietary platform that maps and analyzes the entire competitive landscape through the lens of ongoing and structured consumer reviews. Imagine knowing everything that you need to know about your competitor's products, emerging innovation, and what matters most to consumers, without waiting for research.
About The Futurist Group
The Futurist Group helps identify what's next in payments, using modern technology, frictionless consumer engagement, and intelligent analytics. Dedicated to the financial services space, The Futurist Group was founded by an experienced team of professionals from consumer intelligence, fintech, banking, analytics, and payments.
PI-360 is the only real-time innovation intelligence platform for the entire Payments market. Our data combines the deepest competitive insights on every core and fintech product with 6,000,000+ consumer evaluations of every payment feature and innovation in the U.S. market.
PI-360 interactive platform delivers these insights on-demand and in time for your next meeting.
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