Walmart-owned warehouse chain Sam's Club has brought back its travel arm, and this time it wants to sell you a cruise. The retailer has relaunched Sam's Club Travel with a new cruise-booking site built on technology from Boundless Labs, a five-year-old startup whose founders come from Rocket Travel.
The interesting bit is what they're trying to fix. Cruises are one of the last big travel categories where most people still book offline through human agents. That's not just habit — a cruise involves the sailing itself, dozens of cabin categories, dining plans, flights to the embarkation port, hotel nights before or after, transfers, and shore excursions. Stack all that together and a self-service website gets complicated fast.
Boundless Labs claims it has cracked some of that friction. Across its existing partners — including Kayak and employee-benefits platform PerkSpot — the company says more than 90% of the cruise bookings it processes happen online, a striking contrast with the industry norm.
For Sam's Club, the play is curation plus value. Rather than listing every sailing under the sun, the relaunched travel site hand-picks itineraries, sailings and destinations for members, leaning on the club model of a smaller, vetted selection. That fits how warehouse retailers already sell everything else: fewer choices, better prices, members-only perks.
Why should a traveller care? If you're already a Sam's Club member, you now have another place to price-check cruises against booking direct or through a traditional agent — and possibly save money on top. If you've been put off booking a cruise online because the options felt overwhelming, a curated shortlist could make the process less painful. And if the model works, expect other big retailers to push harder into cruise and experience sales, since those two categories remain stubbornly offline compared with flights and hotels.
Worth watching: this is also a test of whether online booking can finally take a real bite out of the cruise agency business. For now, the practical takeaway is simple — Sam's Club members comparing cruise prices this season have a new tab to open.