Travelzoo
Rethinking a global travel deals platform for the next internet, balancing investor expectations with sustainable value creation
Mondello led a strategic project for Travelzoo (NASDAQ: TZOO), a 25‑year‑old online travel deals company with 30M+ members across North America and Europe, as part of an HEC Paris Executive MBA capstone and consulting mandate.
Challenge
Travelzoo operates in a highly competitive, “red ocean” online travel market dominated by platforms such as Booking.com, Expedia and Airbnb. After years of revenue stagnation and a sharp hit from COVID‑19 (net loss in 2020 vs. profit in 2019), the company was facing an ageing core audience, rising customer acquisition costs, fewer and less differentiated merchant offers, and limited product innovation. At the same time, pressure was mounting to launch a visible “metaverse” initiative to signal innovation to investors – without a clear link to the platform’s core value proposition. When the project started, Travelzoo had already publicly announced a metaverse project, creating strong expectations; our role was to help turn that announcement into a coherent, value‑driven transformation path for the core platform, rather than a stand‑alone experiment.
Mandate
Mondello was asked to:
Assess whether and how Web3 / metaverse initiatives could create real value for Travelzoo, and how;
Clarify the company’s true strategic challenges and opportunities over the 2022–2027 horizon;
Design a transformation roadmap to rejuvenate the business model, customer journey and community, beyond short‑term tech buzz.
Approach
The work combined strategic analysis and actionable design:
Market & competitive review: PESTEL, industry trends, online booking dynamics, and in‑depth competitor mapping vs. OTAs, platforms and experience players.
Business model & performance diagnosis: customer segments, value proposition for members and merchants, operating metrics, financials 2015–2020, SWOT.
Clarifying the “job to be done”: why customers and merchants really come to Travelzoo (value, access to deals, qualified audience), and where gaps existed in data, personalisation and engagement.
Transformation blueprint 2023–2027:
Reposition Travelzoo from a pure “deals newsletter” to an experience‑driven platform supporting the full customer journey (inspiration → booking → on‑trip → post‑trip);
Progressively shift from centrally produced content to community‑driven content and experiences (members as co‑creators, influencers, reviewers);
Define concrete Web3 / AR use cases (tokens, on‑site gamification, augmented experiences) that strengthen the core business instead of replacing it.
Key recommendations
Rejuvenate the core platform
Refocus product and UX on experience‑seeking, younger and family segments; increase personalisation and interactivity; and reposition Travelzoo from a “deals newsletter” to an experience‑driven platform supporting the full journey (inspiration → booking → on‑trip → post‑trip).Make the community central
Gradually shift from centrally produced content to member‑ and partner‑generated content, turning selected members into incentivised “travel influencers” and co‑creators, and using tokens/rewards to drive contributions and data quality.Use Web3 / metaverse as an accelerator, not a goal
Define a limited set of concrete Web3 / AR use cases (on‑site quests, engagement loops, tokenised benefits) that strengthen the core value proposition and can be tested with existing merchants and members, instead of building a separate “Travelzoo Meta” universe.Align governance with innovation
Clarify decision‑making between founder, board and management; create space for experimentation; and adjust organisation (content, product, marketing, tech) to support a community‑centric model.
Impact
The project delivered a full strategic roadmap and business/financial plan through 2027, showing how Travelzoo could:
Increase member and merchant willingness‑to‑pay through a more engaging, community‑centric platform (“Travelzoo Nation”);
Modernise its brand positioning around “experience and community” rather than only “deals”;
and use emerging technologies (tokens, AR, metaverse environments) to deepen customer engagement loops instead of pursuing tech for its own sake.
In addition, the work:
Provided leadership with strategic clarity on the gap between investor‑driven innovation signals and the structural changes required in the core business;
Repositioned Web3/metaverse from a stand‑alone promise to a set of concrete features serving a renewed platform strategy;
And offered an actionable transformation blueprint (product, community, organisation, financials) that, if implemented, could support a return to profitable growth by 2027.