JetBlue Relaunches JetBlue Vacations – Adds Free Airport Transfers, No Change Fees, + Lots of Other Perks

While most savvy travelers tend to book the best deals on flights, hotels, and car rentals separately, JetBlue Vacations allows travelers to bundle their flight, hotel, and car rentals all in one shot. There’s definitely an appeal and market for travelers looking to get away without stressing about planning the logistics beyond booking the flights.

While I have not yet booked a JetBlue Vacations package before myself, today’s debut of a re-amplified JetBlue Vacations brings along attractive perks and goes hand in hand with JetBlue’s heritage of providing that extra human touch and a great customer experience.

Key improvements of the relaunch include:

(bold emphasis my own)

• Free 24/7 trip planning with travel experts
• No change fees on flights up until 7 days until departure
• Free inflight alcoholic drink and earlier boarding (Group B)- because vacation should start as soon as you board the plane, right?
• Personalized meet and greet / welcome at the airport and VIP treatment on the ground with all-new Insider Experience (currently available in Aruba, Cancun, & Punta Cana)
• Complimentary airport transfers between the airport the hotel (currently available in Aruba, Cancun, & Punta Cana)

• “Very Important Perks” in 15 participating destinations (including resort credits, room upgrades, discounts, late check-out, & other freebies)

• 24/7 contact with dedicated destination insider – even via WhatsApp (currently available in Aruba, Cancun, & Punta Cana)
• Customer Assurance Team (proactively communicates any delays with ground transportation / hotels and handles all necessary rearrangements)

JetBlue Introduces “ByBlue”

For travelers that are not able to commit to the whole “vacation package” upfront, JetBlue introduced “ByBlue”- what they describe as a highly-personalized and intuitive platform that does the additional booking work on behalf of the customer after flights are booked.

As of now, ByBlue is just limited to rental cars with Avis/Budget, but soon will be available to book hotels and resorts, and even relevant experiences on the ground (such as theme park tickets) after the initial flight purchase.

I’ll update this section of the post with more information as it becomes available.

My Thoughts

JetBlue exclusively sources the deals offered with JetBlue Vacations, and keep in mind that you can still stack the $100 JetBlue Vacations statement credit benefit with co-branded JetBlue Credit Cards from Barclaycard.

I’m told that there’s no markup on vacation prices/hotel prices with the inclusion of “Very Important Perks” (resort credits, etc.) by booking with JetBlue vacations, so if that holds true, that could be a valuable way to enhance your JetBlue Vacations package.

Outside of having hotel elite status, if you typically rely on booking hotel stays with benefits from a premium credit card, such as AmEx Fine Hotels & Resorts available with The Platinum Card from American Express, for instance, then this could be a scenario where don’t need access to a premium credit card to take advantage of hotel perks and extras.

What’s in the pipeline for JetBlue in the near future:

• Expansion of JetBlue Vacations to include flight and cruise packages
• Group travel planning tool
• Payment innovation (word of a new financial institution partner to make paying for trips easier)
• JetBlue still planning on starting flights to London next year

Bottom Line

It’s no surprise that most of JetBlue’s customers are leisure travelers, so improving the vacation package aspect of booking travel is the right move. I’m personally a fan of the airline (especially Mint) and Points Pooling is an extremely generous way to share points with friends and family. Now my only wish would be to bring JetBlue Mint to EWR!

What are your thoughts about these improvements? Have you booked a JetBlue Vacations package before?