A fast-growing travel startup targeting millennials and Gen Z is carving out a niche in a crowded sector without chasing mass market consumers – and it’s doing so profitably.

Singapore-based Fly Fairly, which earns a commission on each flight booking and from services like cancelation protection, has seen the volume of travel bookings grow 50% month on month since its launch in August 2024.

Fly Fairly CEO Alexander Yardley (center) flanked by LFG co-founders Darryl Tan (right) and Foo Shi Hong (left) / Photo credit: Fly Fairly

Think of Fly Fairly as a next-generation, youth-driven online travel agency (OTA). Compared to typical OTAs that focus on providing the cheapest flights, Fly Fairly offers more payment methods, flexibility with cancelations, and more transparent pricing, according to CEO Alexander Yardley.

Users can choose from over 100 payment options, including credit and debit cards, e-wallets, buy now, pay later (BNPL), and more than 70 cryptocurrencies. They can also find flight options with cancelation flexibility or add a cancelation protection feature that gives them a full refund.

The company achieved this while remaining mostly bootstrapped (it has raised some funds from angel investors) and running a remote-only team, says Yardley, who was most recently the managing director for global accounts at rewards platform ShopBack.

Fly Fairly turned a net profit this February and continues to be profitable every month since, Yardley shares. The startup doesn’t do any paid advertising aside from Google, and 40% of transactions and bookings on its platform come from word-of-mouth referrals, he says.

Partnerships and campaigns launched with firms like Heymax, a loyalty platform for flights allowed it to tap into “highly engaged travel communities,” the CEO notes.

See also: SG loyalty platform raises $2.6m in seed money to give users free vacations

Fly Fairly acquired Malaysia-based travel discovery platform LFG in April, propelling its ambitions even further.

Finding a niche

The crypto and BNPL options on Fly Fairly’s platform target a small niche: Globally, just 5% of online spending occurred through BNPL in 2024, according to a recent WorldPay report. Cryptocurrencies, meanwhile, accounted for approximately 0.2% of consumer ecommerce spending worldwide last year.

Being able to pay for flight tickets via installments isn’t new, but it is rarer compared to hotel bookings due to their thinner margins.

From a credit perspective, flights are also more risky in nature due to their higher transaction sizes and potential for fraud, Yardley explains.

People also tend to book flights weeks or months ahead, creating more opportunities for changes or cancelation. The non-refundable nature of plane tickets means that customers sometimes resort to chargebacks if plans change and they can’t obtain refunds.

Photo credit: tang90246 / 123RF

Indonesia-based OTA Traveloka, for instance, also offers a native BNPL solution, but it began branching out to other sectors like ecommerce and retail in 2021.

Companies like Affirm don’t share a breakdown on transaction volumes on flight ticket sales, but its travel and ticketing category made up 16% of gross merchandise value in the fourth quarter of 2024.

This makes Fly Fairly, which has teamed up with 10 global BNPL firms including Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay, stand out in the OTA market.

Fly Fairly’s in-house fraud algorithms and third-party fingerprinting tech screens out bad actors, making it an attractive partner for BNPL firms, explains Yardley, who has also led commercial teams at Agoda and eBay.

The BNPL firms, however, still take on the full credit risk.

More importantly, by avoiding a race-to-the-bottom competition with other OTAs that prioritize selling the cheapest flights and banking on value-added services, Fly Fairly has found a sweet spot among Gen-Z and millennial travelers willing to pay a slight premium for flexibility.

See also: Behind Traveloka’s $300m loan payback puzzle

“Overwhelmingly, it’s Gen Z that has an affinity towards the BNPL offering and flexible types of payments,” Yardley shares. Many also want to travel spontaneously, book trips with short lead times, and the freedom to change their plans.

Across the industry, millennials and Gen Z make up around “62% to 65%” of all online flight sales post-Covid, the CEO says. Fly Fairly sees a “similar if not higher” demographic representation among its users.

Different from the pack

While many OTAs typically work with one core wholesaler to supply flight listings, Fly Fairly works with “five to six” third-party wholesalers and aggregators.

This enables the startup to list a broader selection of airlines – more than 650 – compared to Agoda’s 200 and Expedia’s over 500.

Fly Fairly has built a model designed that prioritizes surfacing flight listings with the cheapest price, while giving the broadest selection of airline coverage as well as the fastest search results.

Flight prices are updated in real time, so they don’t change while a customer is selecting an option until they check out, Yardley notes.

Prices listed on the startup’s site also include all costs. There are no extra or hidden surcharges on different payment methods – a practice common among many airlines and OTAs.

Spotify x Pinterest x flight booking

In April, Fly Fairly completed its full acquisition of LFG – a “Spotify-meets-Pinterest” social media site where users can share photos and reviews, and curate lists of destinations they want to visit.

Apart from discovering new restaurants, experiences, and activities at upcoming travel destinations, LFG users will eventually be able to click-through on recommendations to the Fly Fairly site to make a booking.

Image credit: LFG

Without sharing specific details, Yardley says LFG is popular in the US, Vietnam, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore, particularly among Gen Z and millennials.

While the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, Fly Fairly will get LFG’s tech – a “discovery engine” that curates recommendations based on a user’s profile and preferences – as part of the deal.

LFG’s core team, including co-founders Darryl Han and Foo Shi Hong have also joined Fly Fairly’s leadership team and will focus on product, content, and strategy.

This brings Fly Fairly’s entire headcount to nearly 20.

Looking ahead

Fly Fairly is now in 10 different markets, including Australia, the US and Europe, with the latter two being the largest.

International flights make up a growing proportion of the company’s sales, and this has driven up the size of average transactions.

Millennials and Gen Z make up around “62% to 65%” of all Fly Fair’s online flight sales post-Covid / Photo credit: Dr David Sing / Shutterstock

The startup is now working on an “open-loop” loyalty program involving Web3 tokens that will allow customers to earn points on any of the 650 airlines they book via the platform, in addition to standard airline miles, Yardley says.

The firm is looking to launch the program in the second half of this year. After the rollout, these loyalty points can be used to redeem flights on any airlines offered on the Fly Fairly platform, pay for upgrades or ancillary services, or converted back into traditional airline miles.

Yardley notes that “Gen Z has the lowest engagement rates of traditional airline loyalty of any generation in history,” given the group’s desire to explore different airlines, routes, and places.

At the same time, Gen Z uses twice as many brands compared to other generations. “When you’re engaged with so many different brands, you never accrue enough points to make loyalty to a specific airline make sense.”

There’s immediate work to be done, starting with adding more payment options on Fly Fairly and integrating LFG.

“There are some big strategic markets that we haven’t tackled yet – Japan, Latin America, Hong Kong, Taiwan. These are areas that we’re going to grow next,” he says.