How card-linked offers can build loyalty and repeat sales for travel brands

Today’s travel market is fiercely competitive, and with more players entering the game, brands are finding it harder to win customer loyalty and drive engagement.

Additionally, increased sales are - understandably - a common goal for almost every business. With these goals in mind, travel companies often turn to sharing widespread rewards or perks in order to break through the noise.

When developing rewards and loyalty strategies, it’s important for brands to remember that customers are calling for digitized, simplified options to make deals more frictionless and accessible.

Part of a brand’s popularity is deeply rooted in the products or services it offers. Repeat customers often find themselves attracted to a brand that proves they are committed to earning their customers’ business.

In the travel services sector, brands offer various rewards and benefit programs, driving customer engagement and loyalty, yet fueling this loyalty proves to be one of the most challenging tasks.

What many of these organizations fail to realize is that the lack of targeted, personalized experiences will often decrease customer loyalty over time.

Most travel organizations are failing to understand their customers

A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Collinson surveyed senior loyalty experts from businesses in the travel and hospitality, financial services and retail sectors, revealing that the majority of global travel and hospitality organizations do not understand what drives their customer loyalty.

Among travel organizations with revenues exceeding $300 million, roughly two-thirds (64%) are actually unaware of why their customers are loyal to their organization. This statistic reveals a prevalent disconnect between business objectives and loyalty objectives - essentially, most travel organizations are not measuring the right information to determine if their loyalty strategies are working. This not only puts customer relationships at risk, but also a company’s profitability.

In addition to a majority of organizations failing to understand their customers’ loyalty, roughly seven out of 10 (69%) travel and hospitality brands do not even have a framework in place to measure loyalty in the context of overall business performance.

Without the appropriate measurement framework, organizations cannot accurately determine the return on investment of their loyalty programs.

Phil Seward

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In fact, more than half (57%) do not have a loyalty strategy in place that clearly defines a brand’s business objectives and goals. Although, 65% of decision makers within travel and hospitality organizations are planning to increase investment in loyalty technology over the next 12 months.

Without the appropriate measurement framework, organizations cannot accurately determine the return on investment of their loyalty programs.

Many organizations are also taking a disjointed approach to loyalty, with half (50%) failing to collect sufficient data, resulting in 61% of customers choosing to ignore the majority of communications from travel and hospitality brands because they simply aren’t relevant.

This data is essential to gain a deeper understanding of who their customers are to create tailored experiences. When this complex, fast-changing environment is considered, it’s no wonder that true brand loyalty can sometimes seem out of reach for travel organizations.

Personalized experiences cannot be met alone by a plethora of rewards and benefits. Instead, brands must turn to technology to better understand their customers’ behaviors and needs.

CLOs can be used to analyze customers through valuable everyday spend data

One way to better understand customers is through the implementation of card-linked offers (CLOs). Today’s customers aren’t interested in receiving paper coupons; rather, they are demanding simplified, digitized options to help make deals with their favorite brands more easily accessible and frictionless.

CLO solutions enable in-store retail promotions that are linked directly to a customer’s payment card, and it’s in travel where we see a natural and complementary fit alongside established frequent flyer and frequent guest programs.

Beyond just the rewards they provide customers, CLOs can help travel organizations analyze and unlock the copious amounts of incremental data produced by their customers. When this data is accurately collected and analyzed, airlines, hotels and other travel sector brands can gain a better understanding of customers’ shopping habits between trips.

Using these insights, travel and hospitality organizations can utilize CLOs to identify customer preferences, and based on those preferences, develop personalized and targeted offers for their customers, while also driving program engagement, be it in-store or online through more traditional earn and redemption e-stores.

Until the development of card-linked offers, there hasn’t been a method as effective for building loyalty and repeat sales. The streamlined process of registering the payment card, reviewing available offers and making their purchases with participating merchants allows members to earn their preferred loyalty currency for everyday shopping online and in-store.

CLOs provide travel and hospitality organizations with a new tool to better understand customers and provide more "everyday" engagements through highly relevant, personalized rewards, not just when they travel, but on a daily basis.

Securing loyalty increases customer value

Establishing customer loyalty and being able to distinguish one’s brand from another is critical. When delivered correctly, loyalty can be a very powerful tool to positively influence not only an organization’s customers’ behavior, but their bottom line.

Through the use of technologies like CLOs, travel and hospitality organizations of all sizes have the opportunity to compete by increasing their customer base and better communicating with customers to meet their diverse needs.

But before this can be done, organizations must take a step back and first be willing to proactively approach their data measurement to determine if their strategy is successful, analyzing how it could be improved for a better return on investment.

Without a solid base, even the most innovative and exciting propositions will fail to deliver against a company’s business strategy. Those who get this right will be able to stand out from the crowd and develop deeper relationships with customers.