The concept of a travel subscription is not new. Travel clubs and timeshares (and their first cousin, “vacation ownership”) have been with us for decades.
Travel Weekly’s Christina Jelski recently wrote about three travel advisors who found that a subscription model — charging an annual fee for travel counseling and booking services — stabilized their revenue, increased loyalty and spared them from wasting time with shoppers.
But how far can the subscription concept be carried in travel?
One company aspires to use subscriptions to “put the world on vacation.” Its ambition is no less than the “Primification of travel.”
Primification, with a capital P. As in Prime, Amazon Prime, America’s subscription engine of commerce for just about everything other than travel.
The company with this ambition is Travel + Leisure, formerly Wyndham Destinations, a timeshare company that also owns the vacation-exchange brand RCI.
At an investor conference earlier this month, CEO Michael…