For subscribers to Flights From Home, amid the onslaught of promotions, junk emails and reminders to schedule an oil change, comes the shining subject line: “SLC > Paris $560+ Round Trip!”
Suddenly, you’re picturing yourself walking down the Seine, seeing the Eiffel Tower and visiting the Louvre. Maybe you even forward the email to your favorite travel buddy to see if they’re ready for your next adventure together.
“Travel is one of the few things that I feel like can really change the trajectory of your life,” says Flights From Home CEO Chris Muhlestein, who spent a summer in Northern Thailand as a 17-year-old that was followed by another summer doing projects in the Middle East. “It was something that changed my outlook so substantially and really made my life better. And I wanted to give that to other people.”
Muhlestein began his first venture, Pomelo Travel, in 2014, focusing on helping get adventurous travelers to off-the-beaten-path destinations. In 2018, he decided to acquire Flights From Home from the original founders. At first, he thought he would merge the two, but after seeing the potential benefits, he kept them as separate products, brands and websites, although his team supports both platforms.
“I just saw a lot of potential,” Muhlestein says. “I thought the name was good. I thought the customer base had potential, but it wasn’t really making much money. I thought, with some of my prior experience, I could both make it profitable and then open up some doors for people who weren’t thinking about traveling before.”
The customer bases for Pomelo and Flights From Home are distinctly different, according to Muhlestein. Flights From Home is designed and marketed to a more general audience in the Intermountain West. These are, as he describes, everyday people who might only have 10 days of PTO, and they have a family and kids and a mortgage. For this group, the cost of airfare can be a major barrier to travel, and Muhlestein hopes the flight deals can “get them to a destination they were thinking about before, for much cheaper than they thought was possible.”
By opening that door for families, couples and individuals, Muhlestein hopes they have their own life-altering trips. “Maybe you find a different way of eating that’s better, maybe a new lifestyle, maybe a new way of thinking about the world, maybe you’re a better person with your close relationships, a better husband, a better wife, a better friend,” he says. “That’s why I acquired Flights From Home — because I feel like I could reach a broader and more mainstream audience with some of my ideas.”
Service from the Intermountain West
When Muhlestein first acquired Flights From Home, it focused solely on deals out of the Salt Lake City International Airport. After stabilizing operations and refining the business model, Muhlestein turned his focus to expanding the company’s reach across the Intermountain West.
The first step was expanding the service in Salt Lake City to be more robust and make the business model more profitable. As the company has grown, it’s slowly added services to more airports in the Intermountain West, including the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, the Provo Airport, the Idaho Falls Regional Airport, and, most recently, the Boise Airport.
“Our main focus is providing a really great service in the cities that we operate in,” says Muhlestein. “I think the temptation is to expand so quickly that you lose focus.”
Flights From Home doesn’t partner or use affiliate links with specific airlines, a strategy that Muhlestein says allows them to focus on the customer. “We’ll get the best deal and opportunity, no matter the airline,” he says. “So if it’s a really great flight to Paris, we don’t care if it’s on Delta or American or United or KLM, we just want to send out a good itinerary, a good price, and a great service so we can give our customers the best option.”
With each new city and airport comes a new customer base, and Flights From Home experts learn to cater deals to their unique audiences.
“You have to really know your stuff to be able to expand because not every city is the same,” Muhlestein explains. About Utah, he says, “We understand the audience. We understand what people like and what they need, and most importantly, we know the places where people want to travel. … The things that people are flying to do are different in Salt Lake than in Boise, even though it’s so close,” Muhlestein says. “There’s a lot of work that goes into servicing a city, and our goal is to open that door for more people in Boise to be able to get out there.”
Company growth and culture
While business may be better than ever, especially with the recent population growth in Utah and additions to the SLC airport, Muhlestein says he’s focused on measuring success by employee satisfaction, customer experiences, and community impact rather than revenue.
The goal of helping people travel extends beyond customers. Many Flights From Home team members were drawn to the company by their own love of travel, and Muhlestein intentionally built the business to support that. Employees are given flexibility and, when possible, opportunities to travel — an investment that often comes back to benefit the business, as widely traveled flight experts can offer first-hand knowledge and expertise on destination deals.
After almost 10 years in the business, Muhlestein says they haven’t had any problems growing, but the trouble is staying small and saying, “Enough is enough.”
Muhlestein traces his business philosophy back to an experience he had on his own travels. On a trip from Thailand to Laos, a laundry shop lost all of his clothes the day before he was set to leave. With only one outfit, he boarded a boat to Laos.
Once he arrived, he stopped at a market to buy essentials. After he paid, the shop owner closed up for the day. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ and she said, ‘Oh, I sold enough for today. I’m going home,’” Muhlestein recounted. “It’s a silly story, but how many businesses, when they’ve sold enough, go home?”
That moment became a touchstone for Muhlestein’s approach to running Flights From Home: controlled growth that prioritizes quality of life. Success, he says, is measured by whether employees have the flexibility and support to live meaningful lives outside of work.
While the Flights From Home team sends out hundreds of emails every year with destination deals, they also receive just as many messages back from customers who say they never would have booked a trip otherwise. For Muhlestein, those messages are confirmation that the company is doing what it set out to do. He said, “We just want to help people expand their horizons, get out of their comfort zone a little bit and see something larger in the world.”