Welcome to Travel Again Presents, the weekly travel roundup covering the headwinds and tailwinds impacting the business of travel. Please welcome our hosts, Mike McCormick and Ed Silver. Hello, Mike. Welcome back. Hey, Ed. Good to see you as always. See you too we are still in season three episode four man we are we are just cooking this season yep it's great great guests never never ending uh amount of uh content and issues and news to talk about as well so uh I'm looking forward to another episode Yeah, we're going to cover the news as always.
There's some serious ups and downs in travel, which we'll go through. And then, man, today's guest, I have been looking forward to this guest for a while. It is one of my favorite topics covering loyalty, credit card, bank travel platforms. Man, Mike, hold on to your hat. It's going to be a great interview today. Yep. So it should be good. All right. With that, Mike, let's bust right into the news. I've chosen three articles today for us, as always. The first one from The New York Times Airlines cut forecasts, raising an early alarm about consumer spending.
Airlines Flash an Early Warning
Mike for the New York Times. Airlines flashed an early warning signal on Tuesday, March eleventh, suggesting that consumers and businesses were starting to get nervous amid wider economic and political uncertainty. Several carriers cut their financial forecast for the first months of the year saying that revenues would be weaker than expected they pointed to a number of reasons mike bad weather high profile plane crashes and less spending by consumers businesses in the federal government and lastly here's a quote med bastion quote we just went through a little bit of a parade of horribles he said this at the jp morgan industrials conference on tuesday morning um any insight here a little context for our listeners mike Well, as always, I mean, travel is a indicator of the economy of where business is going.
It's an early indicator. I mean, we've shown that for years and years and years of all the work we've been involved in in the industry over the years. It's amazing how much of an indicator it is. And it's an indicator of GDP growth. It's an indicator of, you know, overall growth. Let's say, mood or weariness about the economy. It shows it just goes through it because travel drives business everywhere. It's what, you know, it's again an indicator for future business growth or slowdown. And then on the personal spending side, I mean, travel is also like a great indicator for where the mindset is of the consumer for travel, you know, for travel, but their overall budgets.
Right. So it's not a surprise to me. His Parade of Horribles, I think he's even understating it, honestly. And the current environment, well, and I'll say that it is, and it also shows the resiliency of travel too, which is another thing, right? That ultimately, despite the Parade of Horribles that might have wrecked other industries, like travel kind of does always live on, right? Because people need the connection for a variety of reasons, personally, professionally. So there's a lot in there. But I think the fact that, you know, look, that this is getting covered in the way it is tells you how much now to the industry.
Everyone looks towards those as indicators for what's going to happen down the road. And then, you know, not surprisingly, there's so much turmoil and uncertainty and everything happening here in Washington and what that's creating to, you know, you're seeing the stock market effect there and everything else. Well, of course, that that That takes away from consumer and then ultimately traveler confidence. Not for maybe safety reasons, primarily. Usually those things are very isolated when something happens from a safety perspective or security perspective. It has an impact, but it's generally pretty short-lived, relatively.
But, you know, the ultimately the bigger effect is what we're seeing. So again, not surprising, but also very obviously disappointing because we've had a nice trajectory going here and now we're hitting on maybe a little different, you know, growth kind of and or flattening of the growth curve, at least for a little while. So again, a lot to look at here and one we certainly will pay close attention to. But obviously, you know, I think others will, too, if they're smart, because it is a great indicator. Mike, do you think consumers should expect to see lower costs for flights or fewer routes?
Is that how the airlines will respond or neither? Well, on the airline front, I mean, look, capacity cuts, you know, capacity increases, those take time to work into their, you know, flight schedule and system and everything else, like in terms of planning. So even though they're saying, like they're saying, well, we're, you know, United and Delta have others said, you know, that they're going to kind of trim capacity. Usually when they're trimming, it's kind of in areas where they have some unprofitable routes, some underserved, you know, routes that aren't performing as well, that they may dial back a bit.
Um, not primary, you know, changes to their, you know, root structure and everything that, but, but they try to, you know, trim and prune and reposition aircraft and, or sit up, you know, park them if, if that's what's required. Right. But, um, Yeah, so I think you do have that kind of impact, but that usually takes a little time to work itself through the system. So it's not an immediate thing, but it is something, again, they've signaled they're willing to do. Traditionally, airlines are really good at increasing capacity, not so great about dialing back capacity when they really need to.
So, you know, they're out in front of that, too, in terms of letting the shareholders know so nobody gets spooked. But here we are. OK, thanks for that perspective. Mike, article two today is on AI. No shocker that I've chosen an AI article for us. This one is Autonomous AI Agent Manus Joins the Fray. Uh this is from our friends at focus wire blink and you could miss the launch of the latest artificial intelligence intelligence initiative manis latin for hand is described as a general ai agent and has already demonstrated its ability to put together a complex travel itinerary as it created a seven-day trip from seattle to japan the prompt For the China-based AI agent, which is in early preview, ask for a detailed itinerary as well as handbook, including maps, attractions, descriptions, and some essential Japanese phrases and travel tips.
Manus and the Next AI Agent
So like Operator in many ways that we talked about on a previous episode, Manus steps up. Thoughts on this one, Mike? Well, so this is where I get, you know, I think this is more of a question for you. Like, we're certainly at the very early phases of the introduction of this AI agent and the impact on the industry. The question for me starts to become, like, how this is going to play out, like, thinking ahead. It's like, yeah, the capabilities will keep, you know, enhancing and enhancing. But, like, okay, so I have this madness, like, but are people really going to You know, we're all focused on it in the industry, but are people really going to go there, get there, use it?
Or, you know, is Amanis going to build demand, like build up demand and build up a following like independently of, you know, suppliers or OTAs or the loyalty, you know, travel providers, right? So... I find that hard to believe. I mean, people still like fundamentally lean into brands like go to they think brands and brand loyalty first, not some A.I. Tool that was developed in some other part of the world. Right. I mean, so I think to me the game is, you know, you've got maybe maybe some new entrants that will incorporate all these capabilities, but effectively try to build a consumer brand on top of that.
Right. As opposed to the tools being front and center. You know, I mean, it just it doesn't feel like that's where we're going to end up. But I could see, you know, where somebody might take a tool like a capability like that. And then build like a whole new kind of front end experience on it. You know, that's more that that's maybe a whole different flow in terms of the planning and booking flow than what we're used to today. And it takes off, right. For example, and that could be ultimately the ultimate threat, but I, I, I just feel like, you know, like for your average consumer right now, they're not going to say, oh, I'm going to go to Manus to like, you know, you know, they're just they're going to go to the places, the brands they recognize and know.
But I don't know your comments on that. I mean, I know from a tech perspective, you know, we're paving new ground every day. So, yeah. And I think I think that's the key and why I raise this one as an article to watch as in the same way I raised operator on a previous episode. It's not so much that I think Operator or Manus are going to take over travel. It's more the example of that AI can now consume the web, AI can also consume and view your computer, and that those enhancements, those breakthroughs could lead down the road to ways in which travel could be searched in a meta way.
I particularly think meta search should be watching out for these types of things. And it's just an advancement that is fascinating to watch from a technology perspective. And one that eventually could make its way to a consumer. Both Manus and Operator are not even available for the general pop at this stage. So we're relying on third party reports about how it works and maybe even the company's demo of it. So way, way more to come, but fascinating to see the speed of development here in this sector is just amazing. Yeah, I mean, you know, the elapsed time between, you know, this innovation, the next one, the next one seems to keep really compressing to your point, right?
I mean, it's really, it is really something to see. I mean, we're seeing like, you know, basically it's a, you know, it's like a race, you know, a space race of its own way, right? Or kind of thing, right? It's like where you're... The next iteration, the better tool, the better tool. It's like, it's not like, it doesn't take a year. It takes like two weeks and you're, the next thing is out. Right. It's exactly right. And the, and the article was funny because it says blink and you might've missed it.
And this one came out of nowhere and it's, it's just another one to keep an eye on. Yeah. Good stuff. Okay mike article three I chose in light of our guests but also because it is one of my favorite sectors and it's uh from our from our friends at skift the article is um banks and credit card companies are shaking up travel and for skiff they gave three key takeaways and I'll give you a little perspective on this travel loyalty programs have become dull and overcrowded with increasingly brand agnostic consumers who prioritize discounts and perks over traditional loyalty.
Banks and Cards Enter Travel
Maybe time for something new. New entrants such as banks and credit cards are capitalizing on the opportunity and are entering the travel space through the launch of their own dedicated travel booking platforms. Now, that is not a surprise, but there are three key takeaways. According to Skift, our banks and credit cards are going it alone. Banks are quickly gaining share and banks are growing through B to B deals with OTAs. So what's your perspective here, Mike? And we'll obviously have to ask our guest what's going on here. Well, I was going to say, we probably, a lot of this we'll share for our guests with our guests and, uh, and kind of wait on, you know, getting into it.
But, you know, to me, when you boil it all down, it still comes back to a lot of the same kind of core principles that play here. One is like, you know, cost of acquisition of a customer, you know, the loyalty, you know, how much loyalty can you, um, build into the relationship so that the lifetime value of that customer keeps going up. Um, It's a scale game in travel, you know, in terms of the cost of acquiring customers, capital expenditure back into the business that's required. I mean, this is not a, at least from historically, this has not been a small budget, small player game.
I mean, some innovation comes from that area. Most of the time in our industry, those companies get bought up and absorbed into the bigger brands that have the spend and have the reach and have built the you know the the volume so that they can go spend you know literally billions of dollars on customer acquisition right it's a it and even the brands themselves I mean they you know they spend that's a big part of their focus so to me like a lot of the fundamentals are the same but what's interesting is that to your point Back to the dream is that you, being the customer, comes to you first, right?
If it's your credit card company that is offering you, you want the hub of activity for them to always be coming to you, comparing to you, coming through you first. You know, booking where you may, you may not always book there or you may not always ultimately use your points or whatever. But the fact is, you know, you're putting the majority of your travel wallet is going into that relationship. Right. And that's the battle is ultimately. Right. So this is very interesting. And it's interesting how the. The big shifts then change between, you know, and now like to the point of the OTA relationships and everything.
It gets really interesting, right? Interesting bedfellows as the market changes and, you know, as it does, right? So, yeah, I mean, I think it's leading us right into, you know, our guest, which is this is a really interesting conversation. Anyway, any thoughts from you? No, I think I will wait to hear from our guests, but I will say just one quick thing. I'm probably not unlike many consumers who have stopped focusing on my loyalty, you know, kind of work with any particular brand or any particular airline. And I rely on my credit card to be able to go anywhere with any airline.
And so I'll be curious to hear if I'm not the only consumer doing that. Obviously, I'm not. And as you can see, the growth of Chase in that particular graphic was really incredible. So it'll be interesting to hear more about that. Well, I have a little theory, mini theory about some of that, too, I want to talk to our guests about. So I'll save it. I won't even bring it up right now. All right. The buildup to our guest grows. Mike, we will be right back with our guest. Mike, this week we recorded a spotlight episode covering Focusrite's latest report, the Focusrite Travel Innovation and Technology Trends Report.
Let me pull that up for our guests because it's a mouthful. Trends, twenty twenty five generative AI and digital identity converge. And so a really great report from our friends at Focusrite covering all the latest trends in AI and what's going on with digital identity and our Listeners should really go out. The report is free, unlike a lot of the Focusrite research. And so this is a great one to go out and look at. Michael Coletto from Focusrite did a fantastic job covering what's going on in Gen-AI across the board.
And it really covers the most significant innovation trends in travel technology and distribution for twenty twenty five and beyond. You can read the report. At both Focusrite and we will make the report available as well. And then lastly, if you are interested in more beyond just reading the report, you can hear from folks about this by registering for their conference at Focusrite.com. And they're going to do a series of these, Mike. The first one is called the New Agents Trend Series Part One, the impact on company operations. Obviously, we talk a lot about AI and travel.
But this is a chance for people to register and hear from operators and get a sense of what is going on and continue to go on in that space. And so the report, go download it from our site or from Focusrite and enjoy that and register for the event. The event is on March twenty, twenty five at eleven eight and fantastic new report from Focusrite. All right, Mike, now on to our guest. Today, our guest is Jason Wynn. Jason Wynn serves as the CEO of Chase Travel, where he leads all travel-related functions and shapes the consumer travel strategy for Chase.
Jason Wynn, Chase Travel
His responsibilities encompass overseeing Chase Travel, Chase Travel Corporate Solutions, Frosh, and Valerie Wilson Travel. Under his leadership, Chase Travel offers Chase card members a comprehensive suite of travel content and resources, including the edit, voyages, and reserve travel designers to help them craft their dream travel experiences. Please join me in welcoming Jason Wynn to the stage. Welcome Jason. Hi there, Jason. How are you, Mike? Good, good. How are you doing? I'm great. Thanks for having me on here. Well, thanks for taking some time. Jumping right in, I mean, look, I've known you in the industry over the years, but it's been quite a journey for you and really for Chase in parallel to be sitting here today with that all under your umbrella.
Just take a minute, tell us about your journey a little bit to getting here and how's it going in Chase right now? Yeah, journey is a good way to describe it. It's been fast-paced, a little bit of a roller coaster, but an incredible ride. And I think we're really excited about the future. Yeah, how did I get here? Listen, we're all the sum of our experiences. I've been in the industry coming up on thirty years now. Started in the airline space you know had an awesome opportunity to work with some young execs that now are kind of the stalwarts and leaders of the airline industry you know doug parker and robert isom and scott kirby andrew nacella uh you know a guy named jr wilson who you know bought a bunch of airlines including frontier and that um with bill frankie so um it was a great way to cut my teeth in the industry and learned a lot from those guys had a chance to go from there to you know american express where learn a different side of the business and more about distribution and the customer side and then ultimately and mike we had some overlap you know just in conversation because we were both in the dc area at the time um I had a chance to go work for a startup I worked for the founder of Priceline, a guy named Jay Walker, had an idea around business travel, sort of in the space of what Navon and Travel Perk is doing, but a little bit different take on it.
And did that for five years, trying to build that business, ultimately unsuccessful, but I would say the best education, maybe the most expensive education I've ever received. Although I did go to Columbia, so maybe not, I don't know. But certainly the most valuable. And the sum of trying to build something from scratch and what I had learned prior to that then kind of led me to the opportunity to chase Allison Beer, who is our CEO of All Card and Commerce Products, was someone who I worked with during my American Express time.
And she reached out saying, hey, you know, kind of coming out of COVID, we see a real opportunity here and would like for someone to come in and, you know, formalize this strategy for us. Well, it's interesting, too. And, you know, you're talking about the upside with with, you know, Jay and all that. But, you know, one of those that, you know, to your point, like not everything works. Sometimes you learn as much from the things that don't ultimately is the ones that do. Right. And but in that case, like you did have you.
It seemed like on that one you had like a loyalist following. And but it never it didn't get beyond that. People were either like. This is the best thing ever. Or they were like, hell no, never. Right. There was no middle ground on that proposition. It was interesting, though. It was like an interesting little part of our history in the travel sector. Right. So, well, now you sit on top of. Know really a broad range of assets and I know you know some of them it's been a combination of acquisition and which certainly build put the building blocks together but then also obviously a lot of a lot of integration work and organically growing at the same time and doing everything I'm always fascinated by those.
I mean, Ed and I met because of our involvement in Sendent, which was also a similar, right, in its own way. And all the all the brands we put together and all the assets we put together. And, you know, by the way, Todd Siegel is the CEO of CX Loyalty came from Sendent. He worked over there as well. So, yeah. Yeah, we're there's not we always say it's like one degree of separation, man. There's no like everybody is well, like the the paths all across. Right. But it's interesting, like when you do that, like I always used to say, like, you know, we would go and do, you know, at that point with send in, you know, we had a blank checkbook to go get what we needed.
It had to work, of course, and had to produce results. But there's always that pressure of, you know literally the eighteen to twenty four months it just always takes to like bring on and integrate an asset and you know as opposed to what's on paper investment bankers shareholders want to say well it's in the it's in the plan so therefore it's done already like they don't want to hear about the eighteen to twenty four months it takes to put it all together and in your case I mean you know this is it was ambitious right you you know you were, you know, to do a whole vertical integration between CX loyalty on up to what you're actually, what the consumer is actually seeing doing brands.
I mean, it was, you know, ambitious, but tell me like, where do you think you are now? How do you think you are? You know, where do you sit versus competition, et cetera. Give me a little bit of a, you know, state of the union for chase. So Mike, are you saying that integrations are hard? We, we, We all know they are. That's for sure. For me, because I just tell Ed to do it. That's exactly right. I was just going to say. Yeah. I mean, everything looks so perfect on paper.
High Tech Meets High Touch
Yeah. Listen, I've been incredibly proud of the team and, you know, the leadership of the teams we've acquired between CX Loyalty and Frosh and how everyone kind of onboarded the mission of going after a bigger prize and, um you know trying to keep everyone in the boat and sell them on hey here was the thing that you were focused on yesterday which is no longer the thing it's now focused on that all of that is incredibly difficult but I think we've managed it really really well um I think we're you know we still have the last kind of couple miles in the marathon to go around some of the tech integrations but we feel really good about it I think the the thing we're trying to do.
And, you know, the notion behind it is pretty straightforward, which was like, Hey, if we look at our competitors in the loyalty space, if we look at our sort of competitors writ large within travel, you know, where, what are the things that we think are going to give us the most control over the future destiny? And it was like, all right, we need to own our own tech. So this whole notion of high tech with CX loyalty, having our own platform. Have over a thousand you know product and engineers and design folks within the organization fully dedicated to our roadmap and travel which is absolutely incredible and then it was all right how do we service that and how do we make sure we can deliver you know the high-end capabilities and that's where frosh came in you know for that high touch and really sitting at that intersection was if I was to boil it down into something that was really simple.
It was, can we sit at that intersection of high tech and high touch given the assets that we've got within JPMorgan Chase, which skew affluent and how do we deliver that experience to the future? And so, you know, as we've moved on, I feel even more bullish behind the strategy. I think it's proven itself out still a ton left to do, but I couldn't be happier with the acquisitions that we've made and so far so good. Good. Yeah. And so I'll come at it a little different direction. This is one I wanted to, you know, I'm always curious about.
I mean, Ed and I certainly have also done a lot of work with, you know, various brands around the space and certainly in your space. And I'm always curious because like at the end of the day, I mean, look, Chase is a bank. Credit card issuer, you know, that's the core business, right? And, you know, we working in the travel industry always, you know, to me, travel is everything, right? And there's certainly brands and companies out there that are solely focused on travel. That's, you know, what they do. And it always struck me a little bit of the balance of, although you can, I assume within Chase that travel in terms of a, for any cardholder, the most important benefit to them is travel or travel related benefits or the things that the vast majority of your customers would say would be the most important kind of feature aside from the actual credit card vehicle itself, like what they do.
Where Travel Fits Inside Chase
But at the end of the day, the business is, it's a balance, right? Do you where does travel fit in the priorities within Chase? Like, do you feel like it's you know, is it the highest priority? Is it like, you know, because you could see where it doesn't have to be, but it's it creates an interesting kind of, you know, let's say balance or conflict at times when you're when you're you need resources, you need things, you need focus, you need attention. Like, how do you balance all that within Chase?
Yeah, I mean, A couple points there. I mean, one, JP Morgan Chase is so large, right? We talked about Jamie talks about our fortress balance sheet and, you know, we've got eight million households on the Chase side that bank with us or work with us. So the ecosystem is absolutely massive. And I think the notion, which really was Mary Ann Lake and Allison, to their credit, coming out of COVID was this. You know, there's a lot of disruptors out there, especially in fintech, that are kind of taking slim portions of the value proposition, delivering these beautiful experiences and shipping away to get at our core asset, which is deposits and banking.
And it was, all right, well, like, what things can we do top of funnel to increase engagement and travels this natural adjacency, right? It's like, hey, this is important to folks. We don't own our own assets. So like, let's control our destiny in that space and be able to deliver these great experiences by which, you know, we can bring new customers in, especially skewing younger and start to you know get them into our fray and by the way I listened to your you know um the fact that you referenced this gift article I mean that's exactly what we're trying to do is is get these younger generations who are looking to their bank for more than just their bank and are starting to adopt and see us as ones who can influence their lifestyle experiences and be able to deliver against that promise Ultimately, that then brings them into the core assets like banking.
And so capital like recurring revenue that comes from travel, opportunity to engage these customers across their day to day. That was the reason behind it. You know for for us and of course there's balancing of priorities across the firm but the fact that as a result of these acquisitions as I referenced we're self-contained I've got you know six thousand employees including tech fully dedicated to travel you know our profit margin that uh is sustainable enough where we're our own ecosystem and we're able to invest the way that we need to invest and and it's just really a great differentiator and benefit for us to have One of the fundamentals, like it always comes back to the money, but it's like, hey, look, and it's, you know, airlines can say that, I mean, travel is never going to have the margins that banking is going to have.
I mean, let's just be real, right? That's the, that inherently is part of the challenge. But to your point, like, But I appreciate kind of even what you're saying and like that you're building really – you've built this like self-contained full end-to-end business that delivers on its own. You could pull – I mean to me, you could take Chase Travel out – put it over here as a separate company and you've got a healthy company that, you know, like with great, you know, really strong numbers relative to our industry. Right.
That's the, and that's always the, I mean, to me a bit of the push and pull, but it's, it's an interesting balance that you guys seem to, you know, seem to be managing it well. So it's just a, I always, I always like look at those, even from a leadership perspective, right. You know, you're, you know, foot on the pedal, gas brake, gas brake. It's like always those balancing acts, right? With travel loyalty generally, now back to loyalty, where do you see loyalty programs going? Where do you see the future for your programs?
Yeah, I mean, it's a little crystal ballish, but I think the data in that's pretty telling. And let's skip referencing back to that and both of you discussing how you look at your points. I believe the trends are telling us that the younger generation is less brand loyal in their loyalty program. So when you think about just having all your points in one particular supplier and that, doesn't tend to be where people are focused. And that's where the loyalty programs have a real benefit in the fact that you're accruing these things through not just your behavior with travel, but your everyday spend and you're building up essentially this war chest to be able to deploy against these great lifestyle things that you want to do, travel being a primary one.
And so, you know, just the growth that we're seeing within the card business and what we're seeing around millennials, Gen Z's coming, which is the lion's share of new acquisitions that are coming in, you know, suggests to us that our currency, which is ultimate rewards and our product travel and dining and these other assets we have are the things that are resonating. And so I think we're going to go from strength to strength. Yeah. Okay. Let's kind of shifting gears to like, you know, AI personalization, you know, use of data.
I mean, clearly, you know, Well, secure use, appropriate use of data is obviously hugely fundamental to your business, right? You know, where do you see the trends going for you there? Where are you, you know, where are you putting your placing your bets? Where do you see, you know, AI in the bigger picture for Chase Travel? Little thoughts along those lines? Yeah. I mean, you know, we, we hear about these things all the time that this, this is gonna change travel and that, you know, whether it was the online travel agencies and that, um, you know, previously, this is one that.
What AI Changes, and in What Order
The closer I get to it, this is fundamentally going to change travel AI. One of the benefits that we have at the firm is we are obviously investing heavily, heavily in this space. We've been investing in this space for years and years and years, so now it's just these large language models and that coming to fruition. We are tapped in with a lot of the LLM providers, having conversations with them around what they're seeing, how we can work together. And just increasingly, I'm like, oh, this is going to change the game.
So we are putting a lot of focus here. Starting point is obviously just more around efficiency. How can we make the agents take work away? Fair rules and things in the GDS that are really complex and simplify those down real time. Taking in calls, we have over two million calls that have been fully analyzed now. So every call that comes into our call center gets fully analyzed for issues and what was the core of it that we can analyze and bring that back to the next call. So it's really around that.
The future is going to be around the agentic side of things. And we're working through our plans there. And I still believe that the agent will be in the middle, but this is going to be the thing that absolutely supercharges our business. And I think for us, where we think we are going to be in more of a catbird seat with this is we are sitting on the biggest amount of data out there relative to the travel industry, just given our card business and the transactions that are going through. So being able to leverage that in our models and being able to bring back personalized results, it's got to be the thing that for us is going to over time separate us from the pack if we do it right.
Anything coming soon related to the user interface in terms of how the user searches for travel once they're within your portal? Yeah, I mean, the customer facing side of it is the next step. Obviously, given we're bank regulated in that, we've got to do it the right way and think through it. I think the good news for us is if we're talking about, we sit behind a firewall, so you've got to authenticate these. So there's two different passwords. There's the, hey, can you just do something out in the wild? Much harder equation for us to do given data privacy in that versus you log in and now you're in our ecosystem.
And given that a lot of the search and that is not going to require proprietary data, at least at the outset, to come back with, hey, we've got this great edit property, right, which would meet your needs, or here's how you can maximize your points balance to be able to get for fifty thousand points, how you get air card, you know, whatever that might be. All those use cases are you know well within our purview and and things that we're marching towards well I think one of the advantages you have and that was in that part is that in order to do the things that to me like they want to do things that are going to be really innovative and interesting for the personalization part to your point about the data you have you know you you have a much different like purview in terms of not just where somebody's spending with that one supplier or even just on travel or just in that, but you have a much broader picture of their whole world, which if the customer is giving you the permission to do, to your point, you could really come back with some much more much more you know interesting personalized kind of offers rates program you know like things at the right and that gets really exciting on one level if if you're a willing participant in that but then back to in order to do that I have to have a lot of trust that you're not just you know yeah you know using or misusing data to like you know kind of get something out of me right and that's where I think that we mentioned that in the news articles I still feel like that you know I love I play with all the tools I do some ed is like you know got he's he's got it he's been in every one of them right but like I don't think I don't have any trust in those tools I have a trust in a I would have a trust in my banking and you know card relationship with you and if you're using those tools and I feel you know I feel like appropriately you know that I'm I'm good with that.
You know, give me a great offer on something, a program or something. I get excited. Right. It's different as opposed to getting some random thing that like you're like, oh, you know, they know that. But I bet today you still have a pretty hard firewall from the card spend patterns of an individual. I bet that doesn't cross over into the personalization experience of the travel portal or does it? Are you able to use that data? We are able to use that data. I mean, obviously safeguarded and through all the right channels and through our compliance and regulatory bodies and that, making sure that we're using it.
But yes, we use it in the way that we are, or I should say we are in the process of using it in the way that we personalize the sites and try to get the right content. I mean, at the end of the day, right, you want to be able to find the things that you're looking for. We are a mall, right? We have content from a lot of different sources. And so navigating through that can sometimes be a challenge. And so that we're able to help you with that, whether that's just the way we sort things and personalize that to you, Ed, versus you, Mike, or the marketing offers and how we go after customers that may have not used us in a while to bring them back with, you know, that's how we're using the data today.
Yeah, but even along those lines, this goes back to, man, what's old is new again, right? And I remember back when I first started out in the industry, travel agents would do the old fam trips, familiarization trips, so you'd get to know the destinations you're actually selling and offering to your customers. And I still feel like kind of coming forward to today, it's like, yeah, AI could come up with all this wonderful. But, you know, has anyone actually done that trip? You know, do I, like, somebody, like, vetted that offer?
Like, I mean, I still think there's, like, there's something to that, you know, marrying all these elements, right? It can't be just about the technology to me. And maybe I'm showing my age and my relevance in that way. You are. You definitely are. I guess I am I mean no just because I think but you have one you have one you you know you've one bad review one you know one my god that trip was terrible did anyone actually go to that property you know it was not what I thought I was buying and it's not just the property but then that's your reputation is chase too like I so I think that's what I'm getting at like I think there's there's got to be some It can't just all be about that.
It has to be more. Also, it's back to brand and brand reputation, which I think is going to carry the day. But anyway, well, kind of thinking through like when you look ahead now, boiling it down. Top opportunities, challenges ahead in the next twelve, eighteen, twenty four months? Like what's on your you know, what are you thinking about in the shower? What do you think? What are you worrying about when you go to bed? What's the you know, what's on your mind these days? Big picture. Yeah I mean I think the immediate term is just keep plugging on the plan like we've got you know we set this thing in motion with sort of a five-year plan and we're chopping wood and getting through that and I feel great about the execution of the team so far but we've got some immediate things that you know just do it basic things right how do we improve the experience making it easier for folks to find things upgrading the commerce platform to be more modern looking and feeling.
Investing in the Inspiration Stage
We're investing a lot in things like content and the inspiration stage, not just the transaction stage. So you can see like, hey, great new hotels here and great places to dine over here. So layering a lot of that in, and you've probably seen that if you've played around with our site, that that's all sort of net new. We've got a whole team around. Doing that having you know great content the edit is a prime example last year we were the first one online entity to have southwest they've just done a deal now expedia has them too but listen you know the fact that we're the only one in the loyalty space with that so continuing to figure out how do we differentiate our content we've got these great co-brand partners right that we're working with to be able to do that so I feel really good about that um the longer term I think moat for us that we can start to build on is what we were talking about.
How do we harness the data in the right and appropriate way, given what we know about the customer? If we can do that, there's just an advantage there that no one else is going to be able to replicate. And I would say the other thing is, you know, we're talking about travel, but the firm is invested in a lot of lifestyle assets. Our dining platform, we acquired a company called The Infatuation, right? On the offer side, we own our own destiny there. We acquired a company called Fig. So we have all of these assets.
And to the extent that we can, with data, start stitching these things together where it's not just about the trip, it's about the things we do on the trip. And it's about the value that we can deliver to you through great offers to help you during your trip, whether it's a new bathing suit or whatever that might be, right? So those are our plans and strategy as part of this commerce world. And if we get that right, In my mind, that's the opportunity that really kind of separates us. So that's, you know, coming in the coming years sort of thing once we get through our immediate cycle.
But that's what I'm excited about. On the challenges, you know, none of the macro stuff or even – you know, the competitive side is something that I worry too much about. I like keeping an eye on it, but you know, at the end of the day, I think if we do what we're trying to do, we'll be fine. It's really around things like prioritization, right? I mean, we, there's just so many things we would like to do. And you're like, you think about these things, you're like, well, just stack rank them.
But the reality is it's hard. There's a lot of trade off decisions of do this versus that. And we want to, you know, we want to do it all. So, making sure that we are really keeping our eye on the ball of these are the things that are important here's what we're going to deliver understanding what the customer is looking for you know we use this jobs to be done product framework to really try to focus our attention on what are the problems we're trying to solve uh with the customer um and then I would say you know just complacency right I mean as you get into kind of ba and moving through things how do we make sure that we're you know, and this is really the job of leadership to make sure that everyone is focused on the mission and the fact that there's a big mountain there that we're making progress on, but a lot more to do.
So those sort of be to the extent of it. All that said, I sleep well at night and I feel really good about where we're going. Good. Good for you. I'm having a flashback to sitting in meetings with Ed where I would be like, yeah, we could do this and we could do this and this. And he'd look at me and be like, look, we're going to talk about what we're going to do. He would force me to talk about what we're not doing. I'm having a flashback. All good technology leaders and product leaders do that.
You have to, right? You got to make choices. That's right. Yeah. Uh all right so we have our season three wrap-up question I'm gonna read it it's we're all faced with real and perceived chaos in our personal and professional lives so how do you cope with chaos in your life oh my gosh what a great question uh I I'll have I gotta be figure out how to be sure with this I i So I would say that one of the things that I see just in a world that's pretty chaotic these days is, you know, those people that have faith in something, some greater power, it doesn't matter what, is a real benefit in times of chaos.
And so I'm fortunate enough where I have that and I anchor to it, believing there's a bigger picture sort of thing and that there's reasons for things happening. There's a lot of comfort in that if you've got that. And I think increasingly as the world kind of moves a little bit away from that and focus on self, things get a little more chaotic, right? Because you're less receptive to other points of view and you're less receptive to the way things are as just kind of being the way they are. So I benefit from that.
I anchor to it as much as I can and it's great. Beyond that, I bought a sauna and a cold plunge, and I use both religiously, and they're absolutely amazing. That's good. That's awesome. Bring it down to practical daily tools. Something tangible, yeah. Great answer. All right. Ed, what do you think? Should we be ready to sign off? That's great. Jason, thank you so much for your time. Jason Wynn is CEO of Chase Travel for JP Morgan Chase and Company. Jason, thanks for being a guest on the podcast today. Guys, thanks for having me.
Post-Interview Analysis
Cheers. Good luck. Great stuff. All right, Mike, another great interview. What do you think? Yeah, a lot to unpack, right? Yeah. When we, uh, when we go back with it, but again, I, you know, it's, it's really interesting. Like I, uh, when you look at the landscape of travel and how, you know, even with all the short-term kind of activities, the bigger picture of what's happening at a very macro level and the growth of Chase Travel and how far, in reality, how far they've come in the last, you know, since, well, since Jason joined and they put these at, you know, from the initial acquisition of CX Loyalty and kind of putting the building blocks together.
I can still, that seemed, it wasn't that long ago, right? I mean, it's very, you know, you're not in the scheme of things of how far they've come. And I still remember when the first announcement that came out was, when Chase acquired CX Loyalty. Yep. And then the Frosh got positioned shortly afterwards. And it was kind of like, well, you know, from inside the industry, it's like, well, I think I know where they're trying to go here, right? But it was like, wow. It seemed... It was very ambitious, but also seemed like, wow, it's going to, you know, take a long time to get to...
But in real terms for the industry, they've moved fast. I mean, to grow from... What they started with and certainly to where they've gone in a period of time in terms of volume scale and everything. It's really impressive. I mean, it's quite a journey, right? Yeah. I really liked his answer on personalization. I would love to spend an hour talking to him about it because I would argue that the first bank that actually cracks the firewall between all of the spend patterns on my credit card over a vast sum of time and data and uses that to really understand my intent.
We use it to understand what I want out of my portal experience, what I want out of my travel experience, the add-ons that I get when I arrive from travel. From a swimsuit to suntan lotion to the experiences, the first portal, the first bank portal that can crack that and really use AI and personalization to drive that, I think will win the game in a big way. So kudos for Jason to saying that they're on their way to cracking that. And I do think the first bank that does that will make a huge dent in the marketplace.
So I'll be really excited to see more of that from Jason. I agree. And, you know, I mean, look, you know, your purview sitting when you worked with Ice Seeds, you know, my work in the past, like Air Canada and another, not to mention the card brand. But like, you know, there's a lot that we also have a lot of insight into that whole, you know, what's involved there. But I agree with you. I think that's right at the heart. The heart of the matter. What you just said, I really do in terms of and the and like he said to the moat that, you know, how they can really form even a bigger moat around their customer base and keeping them loyal is that, you know, the dream is that, you know, if you're a Chase cardholder, You know, when I think travel, the first thing I do is like, oh, let me go check the Chase portal and kind of see what's there, see what they're offering me.
I might go out and shop and compare still. But at some point, you know, I'm going to do that less and less if I feel like I'm really, you know, getting everything I need. Right. Yeah. And in a personalized way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right, Mike, I believe that is our show today. Listen, if our listeners, if you have a challenge in your business or want to better understand the chaotic world of travel, reach out to us at Travel Again to see how we can help bring clarity to your business.
Now back by Focusrite Data and Research. Mike, that is it for today. We will see you back again during our next show. Terrific. See you soon, Ed. Cheers.
