The founder of priceline.com, the entrepreneur Jay Walker, has set-up a new start-up company. UPSIDE is the name of the new, innovative company. With the help of big data, cloud computing and a mobile app, Upside promise business travellers gift cards for flexibility.
What’s the benefit of UPSIDE Gift Cards?
It is an interesting approach. But what exactly is UPSIDE? UPSIDE currently is only available in the US. When a business traveller books his/her international trip with UPSIDE (for now only available as flight in combination with a hotel) the UPSIDE «Flexibility Engine» is checking various data bases for a better price. The traveller might get an offer for a flight that leaves 45 minutes later or a hotel is offered which is a few minutes further away from the convention centre. In case the traveller agrees to book the alternative, he is on the one hand saving money for the trip and on the other hand receiving a gift card. He/she can use the gift card at Amazon, Gap, Nike, Home Depot – or at another shop on the fast growing list of participating retailers.
The model used by UPSIDE is relatively simple, individual flight and hotel deals are combined into a single purchase price. If you got a package price, a discount for individual flights and hotels can be negotiated. Air and Hotel suppliers are more willing to offer a discount if the individual price is not visible and hence they do not obviously undersell its own price. This is the way to offer an attractive price. In the BETA version that is currently available with UPSIDE they are offering five US departing destinations (New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles) to about 40 international destinations. The offer will be expanded constantly. The target audience are definitely not the big corporations but the small and mid-size companies. This is how it starts for now. UPSIDE talks about plans to offer also additional destinations, one-ways and multi-city trips.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8LUmoH9qIE
Will SME’s pick up the ball?
Will the concept work? Will customers be ready to pay a service fee of USD 35.- per booking? Of course, it is tempting to save money and collect gift cards at the same time. Also UPSIDE is offering expense and saving reports. But what are the pain points here? For sure there will be tax-related discussions. Also, what happens when I book a flight, get a USD 200 gift card and cancel my flights 3 days later? Or there are always «creative» users who will try to feed the «Flexibility Engine» of UPSIDE in a way that they will receive gift cards and still get on the flights they originally wanted to book. And what are corporations saying about UPSIDE? Are they really happy about saving USD 150.- for a hotel when at the same time additional costs for Taxis or Uber is caused. The travellers will expense the additional costs for sure but will be keeping the gift cards.
We will see how those – and others – topics will be dealt with. The concept is creative and interesting and I look forward to see if UPSIDE becomes available in Europe. At this early stage there are no plans or information available for an expansion to offer this in Europe too.
Stefan Otter for travelBrain
