Video Interview featuring loyalty experts: Kristi Gole, Head of Strategy, Global Hotel Alliance // Ben Lipsey, Head of Flying Blue Air France - KLM // Andrea Pinna, Global SVP Loyalty Strategy, Radisson Hotel Group // Tony Piedade, CEO Redwings Consultants
GLOKristi Gole, Head of Startegy, Global Hotel Alliance: At GHA we recently refreshed our programme, we re-launched it just a year ago. So if anything, our budgets were CAPEX. During COVID everything was CAPEX, it was all investment. And then this past year, we started moving over to OPEX. So financially, that question is kind of left pocket-right pocket. But in general, yes, we’re investing more, and our OPEX budgets have gone up significantly. If I think about what the biggest chunks are: First off, our loyalty engine it’s a much more generous programme. We have a new rewards currency and new systems. We’re paying more for our systems anyway because we have a new offering. But we do need to – going back to the whole we need to be able to connect systems more and better personalise – something that we really are intending to invest more in this next year is marketing automation. So, again, we have pieces and we do it to some level. The biggest thing that we don’t have is truly technology that’s allowing that marketing automation at scale, to say: “here’s the content that we have, and here’s the content framework and all the different pieces and all the different components with all these tags”. Putting that against “here’s our audience and all their segmentation, everything we know about them our data mark”, and having it all come together in all this channel mix that we know and that we have to balance. So there are about 100 things to think about. But to have that done on a daily basis for over 22 million members with 170 fields on each, and five different channels that we talk to regularly, having that all happen without someone sitting there manually and thinking about it and testing it – that’s what we haven’t found and that’s what we are still striving for. We will find it, or we will create it and that’s what we’re going to invest most in next year.
Ben Lipsey, Head of Flying Blue, Air France – KLM: I think, budgets are always a challenge. Particularly following COVID there was a lot of cost-cutting and investment freezes. At Air France-KLM, we have had a very severe cutback on investment over the last couple of years, and fortunately, we’ve been able to secure some additional investment for 2023. We do expect to see a lot of development to lay the groundwork for new and exciting features that we want to develop. I expect people are going to be in similar positions across the airline sector. I think, in the US and Canada, loyalty has really proven itself again for a number of reasons. When you look at the success that airlines have. American Airlines has made a very bold move in the US by removing any requirement to fly to earn status. Very bold move and very interesting. We are watching that, but it works for them, it works for American Airlines and it works in the American market. In Asia and the Middle East, Australia, and Europe, however, it’s a different ballgame. It is a lot harder for us to justify the development that our colleagues across the pond are able to get as loyalty hasn’t necessarily embedded itself into the consumer DNA as well as it has in US & Canada.
Andrea Pinna, Global VP Loyalty Strategy, Radisson Hotels: Our budget is definitely going to increase because as I said we are now in growth mode, and we are planning to double our portfolio by 2025 in terms of hotels. We just launched a new incredible loyalty programme Radisson Rewards, and we need to invest in delivering the commitment that we have now to our members: points, discounts, upgrades, free nights, early and late check-out, and free breakfast. As I said before, ‘so easy, so much more’. It’s exactly our way to summarise the new loyalty programme, very simple to understand while offering much more benefits to our members and strongly increasing the positive member experience.
Tony Piedade, CEO Redwings Consultants (UK): I think 2022, from my experience, has been about “health check”. It has been brands exploring an asset that they have had as they’ve always known the need to invest in and suddenly there is an opportunity coming up on the horizon that is forcing them to look at that as a proposition or as part of an asset in their business. My experience has been seeing many people rushing to try to establish whether the programs are in good shape or if the tech stack is in good shape? Are we doing all the right basics to have the right platform to build on? There has been also some conversation and investment in automation. As the cost-of-living pressures hits individuals, it also hits businesses and if there is an opportunity to automate some of these processes that are currently being done by a human being, then, I think, there is always obviously an appetite to do that. This has a double-barrel effect. One is the cost-saving the other one is the efficiency gain. But I haven’t seen as much of that being part of the conversation, as I have about providing certainty to business leaders that the programme is in good health and is now ready to be built upon. That in my experience is what has been happening in 2022.
I would expect budgets to increase in 2023. Those that have been caught off guard with a programme that has just been ticking along and effectively been data gathering exercises, will have seen an opportunity to really rely on that loyalty programme in times of need. But I think they’ve also probably found that some programmes that are currently designed and structured from technology and a financial rewards perspective are not quite up to the standard. So, I expect 2023 to be a big investment year. I think a lot of people would have been scared into an “a-ha” moment and saying “Hey, this isn’t ready”. Budget increases are likely to be spent in the following three areas. First, is loyalty tech, e.g., technology and access to interaction with mobile and onsite and at the till. There has always been a question mark around making that work better. I think we’re going to see some of these tech issues being tackled more aggressively into 2023. Secondly, the customer data, in terms of segmentation and knowing your customers is going to become important. It will come to light this year when people realise that they’ve got hundreds of thousands or millions of members, but they know very little about them and there’ll be some investment in trying to bolster that knowledge about customers. And thirdly, I think there’ll be some investment also in just polishing their operation, whether it’s from a delivery perspective, or from a responsiveness perspective.
