Travel / news
Sam's Club Travel Relaunches With Cruise Site Built by Boundless Labs
The Walmart-owned warehouse club has relaunched Sam's Club Travel around a new cruise-booking platform developed with Boundless Labs, a five-year-old cruise technology firm tied to the founders of Rocket Travel.
Sam's Club is extending its travel program into cruises. The warehouse club, which is owned by Walmart, has brought back Sam's Club Travel with a booking site that Boundless Labs describes as a "digital-first and mobile-friendly" experience for members.
The move targets a category that has resisted the shift online. Cruises and experiences are the two holdout sectors where a majority of bookings still take place offline, largely through human agents, because of the complexity involved: the sailing itself, dozens of cabin types, meal plans, flights to the embarkation port, hotel nights, transfers and shore excursions.
Boundless Labs says more than 90% of the cruise bookings it handles for other partners, a group that includes Kayak and PerkSpot, are completed online. The company is five years old and is led by the founders behind Rocket Travel.
Rather than turning shoppers loose on raw inventory, Sam's Club curates itineraries, sailings and destinations for its members as part of the new offering. A Carnival Freedom cruise ship sailing out of Port Canaveral, Florida, appeared among the visuals accompanying the launch.
The relaunch positions the retailer alongside a small group of players attempting to digitize a booking process still dominated by phone calls and travel agents.