Episode 55: On Standing Out in the Travel Industry with Brett Norton, Founder of the Ultimate Travel Club

In the latest episode of Subscriptions: Scaled, we discuss the travel industry and club subscriptions with Brett Norton, Founder of Ultimate Travel Club.

We learn all about Ultimate Travel Club’s unique subscription model. He tells us how to foster a growing online and offline community, the company’s marketing plans, and much more.

Keep reading to discover more about the episode.

Ultimate Travel Club

Ultimate Travel Club is a new subscription-based company aiming to change how travel works.

The members club charges a small subscription instead of marking up or taking a commission on bookings, making prices for trips up to 40% cheaper than online agents and portals. With such high value, customers are more likely to stick with their subscription and use Ultimate Travel Club for future trips.

At just £149 per year, members can receive excellent savings on stays and travel, including a wide range of accommodations.

Membership also includes year-round savings on leisure and lifestyle, including restaurants, theme parks, and golf nationwide and abroad.

Another benefit is that the Ultimate Travel Club matches any booking that may be found cheaper elsewhere. The search tool also shows how much cheaper the club is compared to other major travel providers.

The Business Model

The episode begins with Brett discussing his background. Then, he delves deeper into Ultimate Travel Club’s unique business model and how the brand works.

Brett explains that the company has an excellent leadership team pulled together over the last few years. Brett’s background is in travel, and some of the other founder’s backgrounds are in travel and marketing.

As a team, they recognized a different way to book travel in the future and a new market available to allow customers to get the best value from their trips.

The team was supposed to launch the business before Covid-19. Instead, they’ve taken the time to re-engineer their plans for the company. They built the platform for the company and created a subscription-based model to align their beliefs of where the future of travel is heading.

Brett explains that travel clubs have been around for a while with different approaches. He shares that the difference with Ultimate Travel Club is that they believe consumers should obtain the broadest access in travel across the broadest of cost.

On the other hand, most travel clubs in the past have previously focused on a specific product. This, or they’ve helped suppliers shift unwanted trips, which isn’t all that exciting for customers.

Brett is proud that the Ultimate Travel Club can tick off all the primary requirements that most travelers are looking for these days. These include a broad range of choices, flexibility, and booking protection.

Creating a Community

Brett also talks about the psychological aspect of feeling part of a club and how this is important for the brand’s customers.

He explains that people want to feel value. They want to feel like they can share their interests with the company, allowing Ultimate Travel Club to be hyper-targeted and personalized.

If people are part of a club that’s bringing them value and feel listened to and appreciated, then there’s no reason they should feel like they must go elsewhere to book.

This leads Brett to discuss what the company does to make its customers feel part of a wider community.

Currently, the company is trying to see how they can introduce a virtual community that can develop into a physical one.

While plenty of forums and platforms are available for sharing travel advice, Brett says the company isn’t planning to focus on that route.

Instead, they’re hoping to show several different ways to grid trips, both domestically and internationally, where they’ll look to host a series of pinnacle events each year.

This could include all types of trips, including chartering cruises or attending sporting events. Bringing these live events and trips would become a key part of Ultimate Travel Club’s community for their subscribers.

Brett explains that the brand currently has a resource of travel tips for subscribers and destinations that members can recommend to one another.

 This resource allows members to message and connect, and it’s done in a highly curated way and managed by users. This means the brand doesn’t have to manage the process. Members can explore new travel opportunities by connecting.

Marketing

In the episode, Brett also talks about the brand’s marketing plans and techniques.

Brett explains that a small proportion of Ultimate Travel Club’s membership will likely come from direct retail sales. He believes that if you put effort into building a brand, you can generate great attention from retail.

With his team, Brett is using the next six months to test various marketing channels, understand the cost of acquisition, and take on the investment.

He explains that quite often, marketing channels require brand building alongside. From a business perspective, you can’t work on some channels without building the brand, which the team at Ultimate Travel Club is very aware of.

As such, the team is sequencing activities to build the brand first before investing heavily.

The Future of Ultimate Travel Club

As a new company established during the pandemic, we learn that Ultimate Travel Club is currently piloting. The technology has been built and tested, and they’ve just launched a campaign to get things running.

Brett explains that they did some piloting at the end of 2021, where the company brought on its first wave of mentors. They’re currently already making use of different channels for marketing.

As mentioned, the company has the next six months to fully flesh out their channels for marketing. They’ll apply that data and insights in quarter four of 2022.

Toward the end of the episode, we learn about Brett’s plans for Ultimate Travel Club’s future to become stable and grow memberships. Like any subscription-based business, the goal is to scale up and take a greater level of market share.

The aim is to keep growing those subscriber numbers and build the brand.

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