by Location of Chase’s 9th airport lounge discovered as bank soon to become world’s third largest travel hub
A year ago Chase revealed that they would be launching the new ChaseTravel.com. They promised over the summer that they were on track for a 2022 release. They didn’t make that happen, but they’ve been in hiring mode recently and they’ve continued to put the pieces together.
- Buy cxLoyalty as a booking platform. The company operated Chase Travel. Chase moved to Expedia, then bought cxLoyalty and now they have their own platform.
- Buy the craze which also includes Zagat, as a mechanism to offer sound advice to customers. They develop hotel recommendations alongside existing restaurant guides, and restaurant guides are actually pretty good at it.
- Acquisition of travel agents at Frosch International Travel for reasons.
- Launch of airport lounges in partnership with Collinson (the parent company of Priority Pass manages The Club lounges through its subsidiary Airport Dimensions).
Chase expects its travel platform to generate $10 billion in sales initially in 2023, and $15 billion within a few years, becoming the third-largest travel agency behind Expedia and Booking.com. Chase already generates 25% of total leisure travel spend on its cards.
Last summer we learned that there were plans for a total of 9 Chase Sapphire lounges, but only 6 locations were detailed. In September, we heard about plans for the Washington Dulles show. In December, we heard about Philadelphia. And now we learn from Thrifty traveler the Dallas–Fort Worth plan.
The lease is for space near gate D35 and is for 10 years at a minimum cost of $6,448,706; annual increases of 3%; plus a percentage of gross income.
The full list of Chase Sapphire lounges appears to be:
- Boston: Between Terminals B/C
- Dallas: Gate D35
- Hong Kong: Terminal 1 (open)
- Las Vegas: Lobby C
- New York LaGuardia: Central Terminal
- Philadelphia: D/E connector
- Phoenix: Terminal 4
- San Diego: Terminal 2
- Washington Dulles: Hall A
Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders, who receive Priority Pass cards anyway, will have free access. So it looks like anyone has a Priority Pass card (including a card issued by another bank). It may sound weird, but Chase wanna to present to the best customers of American Express and Capital One, even if they do not wish to increase the value of the premium cards of these banks. Ironically, unless something changes once the first US lounge opens, these Chase Sapphire lounges will not be open to Chase Sapphire and Sapphire Preferred cardholders!
Ultimately, Chase sees an opportunity to capture more travel spend and keep customers in their ecosystem. They see the same opportunity in the home and car ecosystems, but haven’t really taken it. Travel booking helps them capture their customer’s travel spend in terms of experience. They will capture booking commissions (which could reach $750 million, no pocket change even for Chase). And they will have even richer data to pass on to their customers and rent to other businesses.
JP Morgan Chase takes on American Express and now Capital One in the travel portal and lounge business. The problem is that nobody travels very well online yet. Expedia didn’t really get better from a consumer perspective in 20 years. Instead, they spend a lot on advertising to bring customers to their site, and they sell those customers to hotels. They don’t actually add value to a customer’s journey, guiding them to better experiences.
Travel is complicated and advice is lacking. You go online and see schedules and prices, or location and property features, but little tells you if you should take that 45-minute connection to Chicago in the winter, if for your trip you should go out the day before or take the first flight rather than the last flight of the day, and what kind of backup options you may have.
Google was supposed to disrupt travel search and booking, but it’s been the next big thing in the space for over a decade. Whether banks deliver or not, having more competitors can only benefit consumers.
It will be exciting to watch but I remain skeptical because most acquisitions go wrong and no one has done it yet because it’s hard. Chase has the Resources but so does Google, and they have the AI programmers and personal data with which to do mass personalization and personalization in a truly unique way – but they haven’t succeeded (although Google Flights is quite useful) . We’ll have a window soon enough, even if it’s not as early as we were promised.
