Buy Someone Else’s Holiday
How the travel resale market really works – and why flexibility matters more than money
At first glance, buying someone else’s holiday sounds like a party trick. A headline-friendly curiosity, one of those stories you read, nod at politely, and then forget. Surely travel doesn’t work like that. Surely flights, hotels and holidays aren’t something you just pick up second-hand, like a used jacket or a camera lens.
And yet, that is exactly what is happening.
Quietly, without hype, a secondary market for prepaid travel has been growing in the background for years. Not a hack, not a loophole, not a scam. A market born out of frustration, rigid booking rules and the simple fact that life keeps getting in the way of our plans.
Someone books a trip months in advance. Work changes. A relationship ends. A parent gets sick. Burnout hits. The booking is non-refundable. In the past, that money was simply lost. Today, it can be resold.
This is not about extreme bargain hunting or gaming the system. It’s about salvaging value on one side, and accepting a lack of control on the other. And that trade-off turns out to be surprisingly attractive.
The basic mechanism (without the buzzwords)
The mechanics are straightforward, even if the emotional leap isn’t.
A traveller lists a prepaid booking they can no longer use. A buyer agrees to take it over. The original supplier – hotel, cruise line, tour operator – allows the name on the reservation to be changed. Once that change is confirmed, the money is released.
That’s it.
No vouchers, no points, no credits. Just a transfer of a reservation that already exists.
The entire system hinges on one unglamorous detail that rarely makes it into headlines: whether the supplier allows name changes. When they do, resale works smoothly. When they don’t, the market simply doesn’t exist.
This single rule explains why some types of travel dominate resale platforms, while others barely appear.
Where resale actually works (and where it mostly doesn’t)
Hotels are the backbone of this market. Not because hotels are generous, but because many of them are pragmatic. If a room is paid for, the identity of the guest often matters less than showing up on time.
Independent hotels, resorts, boutique properties and even many high-end chains allow name changes with minimal friction. In some cases, the front desk barely notices. This creates fertile ground for resale, especially for city breaks and resort stays that were booked well in advance and then abandoned at the last minute.
Cruises are the second strong pillar, and this often surprises people. Cruise operators, particularly on longer itineraries, tend to allow name changes up to a certain point, sometimes with a modest fee. When a passenger drops out late, resale becomes the only realistic way to recover part of the cost. For buyers, this opens access to itineraries that would otherwise be financially unrealistic.
Package holidays and guided tours sit somewhere in between. When flights are chartered rather than scheduled, transfers are often possible. These deals are rarer, but when they appear, they can be substantial.
Flights, however, are where expectations need to be brutally reset.
Most major airlines, especially in Europe, do not allow ticket transfers. Names are locked. End of story. There are niche exceptions – certain business fares, corporate tickets, charter operations – but for the average traveller, resold flights are the exception, not the rule.
This is why serious resale platforms are cautious with flight listings, and why anyone promising easy name changes on low-cost carriers should raise immediate red flags.
Who actually uses this market
Despite the occasional headline about luxury deals, this is not a mass-market phenomenon.
The typical buyer is not organising a carefully planned family holiday months in advance. They are someone for whom flexibility is already part of daily life. Remote workers, freelancers, digital nomads, early retirees, couples without children. People who don’t need to ask permission to disappear for a week, and who don’t panic if the destination changes at the last minute.
For this audience, the question is rarely “where exactly do I want to go?” and more often “is this worth going now?”
That mindset is essential. If you are emotionally attached to a specific place, date or hotel, resale will feel frustrating. If you are open to being surprised, it starts to feel liberating.
Why this market is growing now, not earlier
Three structural shifts have converged.
First, travel has become aggressively non-refundable. Over the past decade, airlines and hotels have systematically shifted risk onto customers. Flexibility now costs extra, often significantly more. The cheaper the fare, the harsher the conditions.
Second, travel itself has become expensive to the point of absurdity. Accommodation prices in popular destinations have detached from local realities. Flights fluctuate wildly. Insurance, food and transport add layers of cost that were once marginal. For many people, resale is no longer about luxury. It’s about feasibility.
Third, work has become location-independent for a meaningful minority. Remote work did not invent resale, but it made it usable. When your income doesn’t depend on being physically present in one place, a last-minute opportunity stops being a disruption and starts being an option.
What resale platforms really do (and what they don’t)
It’s tempting to think of these platforms as alternative booking sites. They’re not.
They don’t curate destinations. They don’t guarantee experiences. They don’t smooth uncertainty. What they do is reduce friction in a transaction that would otherwise be awkward, risky and opaque.
They verify sellers, facilitate communication, hold payments until transfers are confirmed, and step in when documentation is unclear. In exchange, they take a commission, usually paid by the seller, ranging roughly between ten and thirty per cent.
This is not concierge travel. It’s infrastructure.
The uncomfortable limits nobody advertises
Resale comes with real constraints, and pretending otherwise does a disservice to anyone considering it.
Choice is limited and unpredictable. Listings appear when someone’s plans collapse, not when you feel like travelling. Bookings for more than two people are uncommon. Exact matches on dates and destinations are rare.
Loyalty programmes don’t apply. You won’t earn points, status won’t carry over, and perks tied to direct bookings usually disappear. This is a parallel ecosystem, not an extension of the one you already know.
There is also a psychological hurdle. Even when everything is legitimate, stepping into someone else’s abandoned plan requires trust and a tolerance for uncertainty. For some travellers, that alone is a dealbreaker.
Finally, many of the best deals appear days before departure. This is not a flaw in the system. It is the system.
Is this ethical, sustainable, or just another travel trick?
Unlike many so-called travel hacks, resale doesn’t create additional pressure on destinations. It doesn’t generate new demand. It reallocates existing, already-paid-for capacity.
An empty hotel room helps no one. A cancelled cruise cabin benefits no one. Resale simply prevents waste.
In that sense, it is one of the rare corners of the travel economy where everyone involved gains something tangible, even if imperfectly.
Will this ever become mainstream?
Probably not.
The model depends on uncertainty, timing and flexibility – the very things mass tourism tries to eliminate. But as a permanent niche, it makes increasing sense.
As long as travel remains expensive, refunds remain rare, and work remains flexible for some, there will be travellers willing to trade control for access.
The real takeaway
Buying someone else’s holiday is not about chasing bargains. It’s about accepting a different relationship with travel.
You give up precision. You give up predictability. You give up the illusion that travel can be perfectly engineered.
In return, you gain access – sometimes to places you wouldn’t have chosen, at prices you couldn’t have planned for.
For a growing group of travellers, that’s not a compromise. It’s the point.