Sam's Club enters cruise booking with new online platform
The retail chain relaunches Sam's Club Travel with Boundless Labs technology, targeting a sector still dominated by offline bookings.
Sam's Club, Walmart's warehouse retail division, has entered the cruise business by relaunching Sam's Club Travel with a new cruise-booking site. The technology is powered by Boundless Labs, formerly known as Cruisebound, a five-year-old cruise-booking technology company.
The move targets a category that has largely resisted online booking: more than 90% of cruise sales industrywide still happen offline through human agents, due to the complexity of sailings, cabin types, meal plans, flights, transfers and shore excursions. Boundless Labs, whose other partners include Kayak and PerkSpot, says more than 90% of its own bookings happen online, citing features such as 72-hour no-payment cabin holds, multi-cabin group bookings, a cabin-recommendation engine and no booking fees.
Sam's Club curates itineraries and destinations rather than listing every option, lets members earn Sam's Cash rewards on each booking, and combines digital self-service with human support. The launch puts the company in direct competition with Costco Travel, which handles cruises in-house and reportedly does "billions" in annual gross bookings in the category.
The effort is led by executives with online-travel experience, including a former Expedia veteran and the founders of Rocket Travel.