ota need volume to make the economics work. you need volume to spread out the fixed cost. you need volume to negotiate better terms with airlines/hotels/car rental agencies (i will just call them providers). you also need volume so that when you do bulk purchase at a lower price from providers, you know you have customers that you can sell to instead of taking a loss

in a way, by owning their own portal, chase is disadvantaged compared to banks that partner with expedia or hopper. chase only has their own customers (i don’t think they offer their services to other parties and even if they do, the numbers are not big), while expedia/hopper have both their own customers and those of the banks that partner with them, so chase have to work harder to hit the critical volume

another reason is cross selling. it is ok for chase to lose money or not make money on domestic air fare. they do earn on intl airfare (unlike domestic, sometimes there is markup), hotels and car rental. if chase travel is good, many folks will book everything from them

lastly, it complements their credit card business. the travel portal is part of their loyalty programme, the portal itself dont have to be profitable. it makes sense as long as it costs them less than what they would have otherwise paid out if people transferred to UR to their transfer partners or redeemed as cashback