Sam’s Club Travel Relaunches With Cruises and Deal With Rocket Travel’s Founders

Skift Take Cruises and experiences are the two holdout sectors where a majority of their bookings still take place offline. The Sam's Club Travel cruise experiment could begin to change that. Sam's Club, the warehouse retail chain owned by Walmart, is getting into cruises through a new partnership with Boundless Labs, a five-year-old cruise-booking technology company. The retailer has relaunched Sam's Club Travel with the new cruise-booking site. The company is taking on a problem that has resisted online booking. The vast majority of cruise bookings industrywide still happen offline, through human agents, because of the complexity involved — the sailing itself, dozens of cabin types, meal plans, flights to the embarkation port, hotel nights, transfers, and shore excursions. Boundless Labs says more than 90% of the cruise bookings it handles for its other partners, including Kayak and PerkSpot, happen online. As part of the new offering, Sam's Club curates itineraries, sailings and destinations — rather than pr