Ancillaries! It’s such a nebulous term for the travel industry that it’s incredibly hard to figure out exactly how big the market is — but we know it’s massive and getting bigger by the day.

In some cases, what we refer to as ancillary products are actually the primary reason for the trip to begin with! Think Disney park tickets or the surfing lessons you booked for that major milestone birthday trip.

In other cases, they’re things we used to get for free before folks like RyanAir realized they could charge for them separately — like seats on the plane or bringing your luggage with you.

We’ve also seen the rise of ancillaries as an intersectional business model, where certain services can be sold as either a standalone offering or as a value-add option bundled with other components of the trip — like car rentals and in-destination tours and activities, or even travel insurance.

An even newer segment of the ancillary market is creating entirely new categories of demand, packaging things like hotel amenities into day passes for local customers.

Are ancillaries still “ancillary”, or are they becoming the main dish?

Follows
Gilad Berenstein – host
Cara Whitehill - host
Elad Schaffer – guest
Michael Wolf - guest

Go Deeper

• 2024 CarTrawler Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue – Report - Ideaworks
• Airlines are pushing ancillaries to boost revenue, but offerings slow to come - PhocusWire
• Hotels figured out they were leaving money on the table. Enter the paying non-guest. - Hotels Mag
• Shaping Airline Retail: The Unstoppable Rise of Airline Ancillaries - OAG
• From Base Stays to Premium Experiences: How AI is Redefining Ancillary Revenue Generation for Hotels - HFTP