Why Luxury Escapes Puts Its Best Prices Behind a Paywall

Luxury Escapes began in 2013 as an Australian travel startup. It now serves more than nine million members across Australia, the US, the UK, India and Asia, with a loyalty program, Societe, and a paid tier on top of it. Co-founder and CEO Adam Schwab joins Skift Commerce Summit, November 11, 2026, at Apella by Alexandria in New York City. Ahead of the Summit, he shared what paid membership changes about selling travel and what AI agents could mean for travel’s intermediaries. What a Direct Relationship Buys Skift: You own your customer relationship directly. What does that let you do that a company selling through other platforms can’t? Adam: It’s incredibly difficult to fully own a customer relationship – while we would have a closer relationship and higher switching costs than global OTAs, there is very little friction in travel relationships and customers will often move platforms based on pricing or inventory. That said, the closeness of our customer relationship (via our loyalty programs) does allow for higher frequency and a broader range of products (so not just land and air, but also experiences during and outside travel). It also allows us to communicate far more frequently, often daily, with customers and maintain strong engagement levels. Skift: How does a paid membership change the way you think about selling travel? Adam: Our LuxPlus product (US$175/yr + joining fee) has been transformational for how we run the business – aside from the steady revenue stream, it allows us to offer unique and incredibly priced products behind a genuine paywall (lots of travel businesses have soft or even fake membership programs that properly don’t protect partner pricing). It’s one of the few ways to create a network effect with travel (not to be confused with the scale benefits of the large OTAs and Airbnb). In that the more members in a program the more products we can access which benefits members, so each additional member is somewhat benefitting other members. LuxPlus+ is Luxury Escapes’ paid VIP travel club, with member-only discounts and perks on hotels, tours, cruises and flights (pricing by market). The Chunk Agents Could Take Skift: What is one commerce lesson from outside travel that travel leaders should be paying attention to? Adam: The travel sector is often far too insular – travel businesses look at other travel businesses for innovation – in a similar sense to the finance sector, upon which Paul Volcker once noted, the only innovation they have come up with in twenty years is the ATM. The sector’s failure to create a great trip planner product is testament to this. The obvious existential risk for OTAs and it’s not news to anyone, is what impact agents will have on bookings – how replaceable is the OTA layer? Steve Hafner once said Kayak was essentially a layer of UX sitting on top of a bunch of data – agents have the potential to upend a chunk of travel bookings; the question is which chunk? That’s where exclusive inventory/pricing and brand become far more important. The lesson is to avoid commoditisation at all costs, as without genuine moats, some form of new tech can wash away your business. What Commerce Leaders Have to Weigh Partner pricing: Adam separates a genuine paywall from membership programs that leave partner pricing exposed. Suppliers offering member-only rates now have a reason to check which intermediaries’ fences hold. Agent exposure: Adam expects agents to upend part of travel bookings and leaves open which part. For commerce teams, the planning question is how much of their revenue sits on inventory any agent can compare. Hear Adam Schwab live at Skift Commerce Summit, November 11 in New York, where the lineup also includes Abhinav Anand of Citi and Cindy Estis Green of Kalibri, among other travel leaders.