Competition is heating up between the big banks to serve premium customers across travel, dining and experiences, with American Express looking to hire a leader that will help them build a new app ground-up.
Chase is nipping at the heels of American Express to become the third-largest travel agency behind Expedia and Booking.com. Chase is working to integrate its points, online travel booking, lounge, and dining/lifestyle into a broader ecosystem – but that project was supposed to be ‘done’ a year ago.
American Express has its flag in dining, having acquired Resy. They’re ahead of Chase in airport lounge openings and also own LoungeBuddy for global lounge advice to go along with not just their lounges but all of their partner lounges as well. And they start off as a high volume travel agency and focused on premium customers.
It appears that American Express has a new venture to bring all of these pieces together: a mobile app under development to offer travel planning, booking, and servicing and to highlight American Express benefits at each step of the journey – like access to lounges, booking restaurant reservations, and booking of experiences.
A travel and lifestyle ‘super app’ is hard which is why Chase hasn’t done it yet, despite acquiring online and offline travel agencies, launching dining partnerships and buying advice site The Infatuation, and building out airport lounges with Collinson Group.
According to viewfromthewing.com
