Booking a flight used to be where a credit card's involvement ended. At Skift Global Forum in New York, Capital One Travel's head Sarah Moore argued the opposite: the booking is the starting point, and the real work is staying useful once the traveller is at the airport, in the air, or already on the ground.
Capital One is a relatively new player in travel. It only launched its booking platform in 2021, which Moore framed as an advantage rather than a handicap. Arriving late meant the company could study what existing card travel programmes did and build around how people actually plan and take trips now — a technology-first approach aimed at the modern traveller rather than a copy of the traditional loyalty model.
The practical pitch is context. Moore said the most valuable personalisation is not about who a customer is but what kind of trip they are taking right now. The same person might want a stay at one of Capital One's Premier Collection hotels on a couple's weekend, and a four-bedroom vacation rental on a family holiday — the platform offers both, with many rentals carrying similar luxury perks to the hotel collections.
Post-booking support is the other half of the strategy. That means surfacing lounge information and flight updates through the app, helping travellers navigate disruptions, and suggesting what to do once they land. Moore's argument: being visibly helpful when something goes wrong is what earns long-term trust, and Capital One launched a dedicated Capital One Travel app within the past year to meet people where they already manage their trips.
Experiences are becoming the bigger draw. In a Capital One Travel survey, more than 70% of travellers said they were looking at some kind of event or live experience — sport, dining, culture — and for many those experiences now shape the trip itself rather than being an afterthought. Capital One has leaned in with cardholder partnerships including Major League Baseball and touring artists, plus more intimate food and culture experiences. The standout example: a culinary trip through Asturias, Spain, led by chef José Andrés in his home region, available exclusively to cardholders.
Moore also stressed that no single company can cover every stage of a trip, so partnerships across the wider travel ecosystem are essential. And with travellers increasingly using AI tools to research and decide where to go, she said Capital One Travel expects to meet them in those new channels while leaning on the trust that comes with being people's financial partner — including using transaction data to anticipate what kind of trip someone might want next.
For travellers, the takeaway is that credit card travel programmes are getting more ambitious. If you hold a premium travel card, expect the value to show up less as a pile of points and more as in-trip support, contextual suggestions, and access to experiences you could not book elsewhere. For the travel industry, it is a signal that the relationship with the customer no longer ends at checkout — and that whoever is most useful mid-trip, not just at booking, wins the loyalty.
