A survey of marketing and brand gurus finds that travel businesses -- with the exception of airlines -- lag other sectors in providing annual travel-benefits packages to its customers.
And the paucity of these perks comes despite the fact that 92.3% of the 180 marketing and brand professionals survey by London-based Collinson Latitude, a revenue program specialist, agree that customer retention is "very important."
The survey found that 12.5% of travel businesses provide annual travel-benefits packages to their customers.
In other sectors, the tallies were 46.2% for financial services businesses providing annual travel-benefits packages to their customers, 41.7% for airlines and 33.3% for retail businesses.
"Although the vast majority of people in the travel industry view customer retention as very important, the fact that so few businesses offer loyalty benefits demonstrates that the sector isn't maximizing the opportunities to develop long-term customer relationships," says Janet Titterton, Collinson Latitude's business development director.
[Of course, Collinson Latitude has such a program to provide a company's customer base with annual travel benefits.]
In other findings, the survey concludes that travel businesses are playing a leading role in providing add-ons to their core offerings when compared with other sectors.
Collinson Latitude found that 83.3% of travel businesses provide such ancillary services, compared with 60% of businesses from other sectors, including financial services, publishing, retail, telephone companies and utilities.