We can’t live forever, but we can live more lives. Travel isn’t just an escape — it’s humanity’s oldest immortality hack.

It’s fascinating to view business not just through profit and loss, but through psychology and human nature. Beneath every company’s strategy lies one primal engine: the fear of death.

Strip away the spreadsheets and slogans, and you’ll find humans building entire industries to cope with mortality.

Two Ways Humans Try to Beat Death

  1. Lengthen Life.
    Fight aging, find cures, stretch the years. Medicine and biotechnology exist largely to buy us time. But we’re carbon-based; no matter how far we push, the clock keeps ticking.

  2. Widen Life.
    If we can’t live forever, we can live more fully — by experiencing multiple versions of life.

A survey of late-stage care nurses revealed a universal regret: not traveling more, not living differently. This isn’t just wanderlust; it’s a psychological hack. Experiencing different lives — new cultures, cuisines, rhythms — makes life feel longer.

In essence, travel is humanity’s favorite immortality hack.

The Economics of Living More Lives

Travel widens life, but it also fuels a massive industry built around two essentials: movement and rest — planes and beds.

Flights: The Commodity Game

Air travel is capital-intensive, heavily regulated, and largely commoditized. Most travelers shop on price and schedule. Margins are thin; customers can book directly. Middlemen add little value.

Beds: The Differentiation Game

Accommodations, by contrast, are diverse and experiential — each offering a different “life” to live. Choosing among them is complex, which is why OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) like Booking.com, Expedia, and Airbnb thrive.

Beds are essential, varied, and low-frequency. To fill rooms, hotels and hosts rely on OTAs’ global reach — gladly paying commissions up to 20%.

Loyalty, Scale, and the Power of Aggregation

Now, airlines and hotel chains do build relationships through loyalty programs. But loyalty only works when backed by scale — enough routes, rooms, and redemption options to make those points truly valuable.

Without scale, points feel like coupons. With scale, they become currency.

Still, even the biggest brands face a challenge: most travelers don’t return to the same hotel or fly the same route regularly. That’s where OTAs win — they provide constant companionship in a low-frequency market.

Travelers might not be loyal to one airline or hotel, but they stay loyal to the platform that helps them navigate all of them.

Why Scale Is the Real Moat

Travel is episodic. You might book twice a year. So for any player in this space — airline, hotel, or OTA — scale is survival. The bigger your network, the more reasons customers have to stay engaged.

For OTAs, scale means offering every option, everywhere, turning sporadic trips into repeat engagement.

The Business of Escaping Mortality

In the end, travel is more than movement; it’s a search for meaning. Every journey offers a new storyline, a different life — a small rebellion against time’s limits.

And the businesses built around it — from airlines to OTAs — thrive not just by selling tickets and beds, but by helping us live more lives in one lifetime.

If we can’t outlast death, at least we can outrun it for a while — one trip at a time.

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