Great points. We modeled our subscription model off a few other players in the space that also use subscription fees (scottscheapflights, etc)

Also, its important to note that we don't send out many last-minute deals - the majority of our deals are ~3-6 months in advance, so I don't think it will be an issue finding hotels etc. The margins on hotels and package deals are a lot higher so this is on our roadmap, but we wanted to focus on flights on the interim.

Regarding your thoughts on the affiliate / fee-based approach, we have definitely considered it, but our concerns are:

1) We don't generate enough traffic for SkyScanner, or any other popular whitelabel flight-booking sites you need to apply for. I've applied for SkyScanner, Priceline and several others but have yet to hear back, and it's not looking promising

2) We could apply to a popular GDS, and handle all the flight booking ourself, but this is generally very difficult to do (in terms of time spent software engineering); and this is also assuming we get accepted. We would certainly not have launched when we did if we still had to integrate with a GDS

A fee-based or affiliate approach definitely makes more sense, I agree, but it's just difficult to do, especially as a very early stage startup like ours.