What it means to be a travel brand is undergoing a transformation, and there’s an urgent need for companies to broaden and diversify their revenue strategies. Core products alone no longer define top global brands. Consider Apple Music or Amazon Web Services, examples of massive revenue streams built wholly outside of each company’s core business as a device and e-commerce company, respectively.

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Likewise, travel and hospitality companies, whose businesses are centered on selling flights, rooms, and rental cars, are poised to unlock incremental value from underutilized assets outside of those core revenue structures.

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The challenges and opportunities are clear. The travel and hospitality industry is entering another cycle of financial uncertainty, and consolidation in the U.S. market in particular has intensified pressure on brands to innovate and differentiate.

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To stay competitive, travel companies need to grow beyond traditional categories and turn capabilities outside of their core business into strategic revenue streams. To help guide the industry along on this journey, ZS has developed the 5As Framework (standing for Ancillaries, Attention, Access, Affinity, and Ability), a mental model for identifying, evaluating, and monetizing non-core assets.

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Drawing from these insights, this report outlines go-to-market considerations to help travel companies move from ideation to execution. Its insights identify what companies need to address across leadership, asset inventory, strategic alignment, compliance, and experimentation to implement working models to achieve long-term growth.

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In this report:

• Findings from a new survey of nearly 300 senior travel executives: Explore how leaders in the industry diagnose their own abilities (and competitors’) to optimize revenue outside of their core businesses.
• 89% of travel executives believe their companies need to diversify revenue streams: Learn why the industry often thinks, but more often struggles to act, outside the box.
• 75% have already identified non-core assets to monetize — but only 32% describe their current approach as “very” innovative: Find out what’s holding them back and where they’re looking for inspiration.
• Nearly 90% of travel and hospitality executives described their non-core asset monetization efforts as successful: See the impact for companies that have taken the first step.
• Companies that activate non-core assets are seeing incremental revenue and profitability: Check out examples and case studies from Marriott, United, Airbnb, Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), and more outside the travel industry, which demonstrate diverse approaches to incremental revenue strategies in practice.

• Introduction: Travel and Hospitality Can No Longer Depend on Tried-and-True Revenue Models Alone
• Taking Stock of the Travel Industry’s Progress to Monetize Incremental Revenue Streams
• Operationalising the 5As Framework: How to Make Non-Core Revenue Solutions Work
• Conclusion: The Path Forward for Revenue Growth in Travel and Hospitality