Airline Loyalty Programs: What's Next for Frequent Flyers?

Welcome to Travel Buddy

In this episode of Travel Buddy, we’re joined by the usual suspects Rachel Satow and Ian Andersen, as well as guest Jessica Steinberg, Travel Packaging Marketing Manager at Switchfly, for a fresh look at the changing world of airline loyalty programs. The discussion centers around the evolution of airline loyalty programs, focusing on how airlines are adapting to meet the expectations of Millennial and Gen Z travelers. Jessica outlines how airlines are shifting from traditional "earn and burn" models limited to flights, to more expansive loyalty ecosystems that include hotels, car rentals, vacation packages, and even in-flight purchases.

The team also explores the strategic use of data and AI to personalize travel experiences, optimize rewards, and enhance customer engagement. They discuss the challenges of engaging passive loyalty members and the importance of reaching travelers before they’re ready to book. The episode wraps with travel recommendations and personal booking strategies, offering practical insights for both travelers and industry professionals. 

Transcript

Welcome to Travel Buddy, presented by Switchfly. In this podcast, we talk about all things travel, rewards, and loyalty. Let's get to it. 

[00:00:09] Brandon Giella: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Travel Buddy, presented by Switch Fly. We have, as always, Ian Anderson, Rachel au Thank you again for joining Rachel, not feeling super well, so she might not be talking too much on this episode. We'll see how it goes. and we have as our guest today, Jessica Steinberg.

Thank you so much for joining. How was your day so far, Jessica?

[00:00:33] Jessica Steinberg: It is good. Excited to be here.

[00:00:35] Brandon Giella: Awesome, thanks for joining. So you are the travel Packaging marketing manager at Switch Fly and which is kind of a hard title to get right. So I hope I got that right. and so you are today helping us understand more of the loyalty programs behind Switch Fly, its customers and general loyalty trends.

So the title of today's episode is Airline Loyalty Programs. What's Next for Frequent Flyers? So I would love to hear, just right off the bat, catch us up on the, I guess like the last 10 years or so of travel loyalty. How do you see it from the airlines perspective? What trends or context or history do we need to know about as.

I guess participants and listeners of this episode what do we need to know about what has happened over the last 10 years? What trends or historical context have gone into airline travel loyalty programs? And then we'll get into what's some trends that are affecting today, and then where are we headed in the future?

And of course, why does all this matter. Especially as an airline, especially as a loyalty program provider. So catch us up, give us a brief rundown on how you see things over the last 10 years or so.

[00:01:54] Jessica Steinberg: So I'm coming from the land of vacation package marketing. So I'm wholly ingrained for, you know, the last several years talking about how to earn and burn on packages. And so what I've seen as both a customer and then also in a professional way I've really seen a lot of different airlines big and small, go from, you know, the traditional.

Offering, earn and burn on flights. Sometimes some anci ancillaries and things like that to, beyond that, to packages, to car rentals, to hotels, to things like that. And really giving customers more reason to want to earn therefore really amping up their loyalty program and the reason for being part of it.

You know, if you're. If you have a small network as an airline and the customers in some areas don't feel the need to burn their points on flights with your airline, but they, you know, love to stay in hotels and earn points that's a really great way for airlines to kind of get in on the rest of that customer's travel package, if that makes sense.

[00:02:55] Brandon Giella: Okay. Okay, great. And so you're seeing some of these things kind of develop today on different, you know, consumer needs or different offerings from airlines. How do you see how to market this information and make sure that an airline is positioned well, that they capture some of these trends and really deliver value for the end user?

[00:03:15] Jessica Steinberg: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's all about having the customer buy into the holistic airline brand. If the customer trusts the airline and they love that airline, which many customers, you know, they have that one airline that they truly love and they have the credit card, they're part of the loyalty program.

Maybe they're. You know, the highest status of loyalty, they get their upgrades. If they really trust that airline and you can get them to that place with the airline, they'll then trust you. You know, they'll book their hotel with points, they'll book their car rental with points. You know, they'll book a full on vacation package with that airline because they just trust that airline for from the beginning to the booking process, to their customer service to the end result, you know, when they check into the hotel and things like that.

And so being able to. Speak to those customers about, you know, their entire vacation versus just, you know, the flight, you know, beyond, we have the most leg room, you know, we have that plus so much more and you get all of it as part of this loyalty program. You get your upgrades, you know, you get ancillaries and things like that.

I know American Airlines just launched the ability to redeem. Points for in-flight purchases, which I thought was really interesting too, and just being able to stretch those points. If you can book everything without taking out your wallet, then all the better for the airline.

[00:04:28] Brandon Giella: Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so you're seeing this really as like a brand differentiator in the market today. The way that you're able to say, you know, hey, you can redeem points. In flight for a drink or whatever, and that's like, Hey, actually I do wanna fly American. This is great. So, presumably you guys are seeing internally at least some data where like, if we can bundle this appropriately, you can position it.

Well, given these trends, given the market demand you actually do seem some really good benefit. You know, like I said, this could be internal data or external data or maybe anecdotes from clients, things like that. But you're hearing some real impact. Is that right?

[00:05:05] Jessica Steinberg: Yeah, absolutely. And I would say, you know, it also gives, you know, revenue management teams and loyalty teams, the ability. To even do some testing. You know, with the opaque price of a package, it's, you know, all one price. You don't see the price of the flight in the hotel separately. It gives them, you know, flexibility to be able to say, you know, we're gonna change our redemption rates and make them a little bit better for customers buying a package.

If you're gonna go all in with us, you'll get, you know, more for your points. And they'll go further for you if you book the entire package with us. And so it kind of opens doors for testing and things like that.

[00:05:36] Brandon Giella: Interesting.

[00:05:38] Rachel Satow: So something that I think is. Important for us to chat about is why this is happening. And I know we've chatted about this in the past on the podcast, but you know, we are really seeing that shift with millennials and Gen Z becoming the stakeholders in the consumer marketplace. So if you think about. You know how brands 10 years ago were having to structure their loyalty programs that isn't going to work today simply because today's consumer doesn't want it. So if you're thinking about your millennials and your Gen Z who are expected to make up 50% or more of leisure travel in the US by 2030, you know what is going to make those

audiences happy?

And how can we market to those audiences appropriately? And I think. To your point, Jessica earlier about, you know, finding other ways to earn and burn these audience audiences are looking for more flexible insta instant gratification when it comes to how they can use their loyalty program points and the ability to be able to redeem for in-flight, you know, refreshments, et cetera, is vital.

Like that's, that is such an interesting way to be able to, you know, start to. Get rid of some of those points and not have to save up for a thousands of points from, for another flight, et cetera.

[00:07:02] Brandon Giella: That's right. It makes it an easy way, like you said, to redeem those points. But also it's like a delight to the customer if it's like, ah, I want to get a glass of wine, but I. Wanna spend $5 and then it's like, oh, I could use 25 points, or whatever the rate is. And it's like, okay, I get my glass of wine and I didn't have to shell out any cash.

That sounds great. It's like a win-win for everybody.

[00:07:22] Ian Andersen: I think Brandon, something you mentioned earlier I think really resonates as far as this is a big time differentiator, right? Airline travel has historically been customers have a lot of brand difference as long as. The plane gets you from my airport to where I want to go. Who cares if it's United American, JetBlue, whatever, you know, as long as like time and price are right.

I don't really care. So how do you ensure people are going to your website to book their flight rather than a travel aggregator where the first. You know, airline pops up. And I think this, there's not a whole lot of ways to do that in airlines, right? I mean, they are generally pretty much the same.

They're a method of transportation, right? There's not a whole lot of ways to differentiate. Unless you're gonna start getting just way out there with price. So, so I think this is a really good example of ways to differentiate that's probably pretty low cost on the airline side. And you know, it doesn't.

It doesn't really cost the consumer any anymore. And it's just a way of earning and keeping their business. So I think that's a big part of this as well.

[00:08:49] Brandon Giella: Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. The airline industry is notorious for having razor thin margins. Everything comes down to, you know, fuel costs and leg room because if I can cram one more row of seats in there, I get, I. You know, enough money to basically pay for that plane to travel in addition to the plane and the crew and the airport terminal and all that kind of stuff.

So this is a really great way to kind of tease that out and position yourself. In a really useful way. It delights everybody. Like I said, there's a, it's a win-win for all parties. But here's the question, I guess is how do you know what to offer or what to bundle or what to, you know, ways that you could use rewards?

So presumably. There's a lot of customer data that you can use to personalize these offerings. And I know we've talked a lot about AI on the show before. I think just the last episode we had Rod Rob Neat on the show and he's, you know, head of AI basically at Switch fly, doing amazing work there. And so I would love to hear from a marketer's perspective and thinking about.

Travel loyalty, thinking about packaging, bundling, and positioning in the market as these trends are developing, market demand is changing. How do you see using AI and data to present or find different options that might appeal to travelers today?

[00:10:10] Jessica Steinberg: Yeah, I mean, I think as far as AI goes, you're starting to see on a lot of airline and packaging sites you know, the Expedias of the world. They all have this kind of, you know, travel bot that can help you find what you're looking for. Which I think is gonna become commonplace, and it's just gonna be about who has the best one.

If you go to Expedia and look for, you know, all inclusives in Cancun, there are hundreds of very similar hotels to choose from. And I think it's gonna become an expectation, especially like Rachel said, you know, with Gen Z and millennials to. You know, lean on AI to really help them hone in and find that perfect hotel.

'cause in a destination like that, the hotel is the destination. And so leaning on things like that, I think is gonna become commonplace and just a race to see who can have the best bot.

[00:10:54] Brandon Giella: Interesting. Okay. Have you seen any kind of interesting or intriguing use of marketing or loyalty? You mentioned American Airlines showing. Or being able to use points to redeem in-flight purchases. But is there anything else that you've kind of caught your attention or you're paying attention to as you see kinda the news cycle or you're seeing product develop or just anything in marketing that's catching your attention these days?

[00:11:18] Jessica Steinberg: Yeah, I think one thing, one thing that's, you know, like you said, it's huge for airlines to make money beyond the flight seat. Because those margins are so thin the credit cards are huge. And it really plays a huge part. In the loyalty segment for all airlines. And so, you know, getting that customer to that point of loyalty and then getting them to get the credit card because those margins are much larger.

And getting them to get to that point, but then use the credit card on, you know, in flight purchases outside of the airline packages and things like that. And then rewarding them for doing it and making sure that they're feeling the benefits that, you know, I'm spending all of this money with this airline 'cause I have this credit card and they're giving it back to me.

And so. Great. You booked a flight, you get this many extra points because you booked a flight on our credit card. But if you book a package, you get even more. And things like that I think are gonna become, again, commonplace for the airlines. They need these customers to use those credit cards and the customers will use the credit cards if they feel like it's worth it.

And I think we're seeing a trend. I know the point sky is. Huge. There's really been this kind of gamification of who can get the best deal. And, you know, I read articles all the time. You know, I flew to Europe for, you know, 180,000 points, didn't even take out my wallet. And so I think there's definitely this community of people that, you know, want to be exactly like that and get to that place.

Whether it be with a Chase or Amex or you know, a JetBlue or American Card.

[00:12:39] Brandon Giella: That's great. That's great. Reddit is a great place for that. By the way, if anybody has these kind of like models that they want to build or spreadsheets or whatever, head on over to Reddit. I've been following. There's a subreddit called one Bag Travel, and then. It's cousin zero bag travel, which is people that are traveling around Europe, for example, for like a month with like one little backpack and like rolled up t-shirts and stuff.

And it's great. It's so inspirational and I realize I'm a hoarder.

[00:13:06] Ian Andersen: Y Yeah, same. If let's just side tangent. If you're in, the people in the military can show up on Air Force Base and if there's like, availability on one of the planes going somewhere, you can get on it's called Space A Travel. And they recommend like. I show up with two bags. One's got like summer clothes and one winter clothes.

'cause you don't really necessarily know where you're going. But it can be a fun way to vacation sometimes

[00:13:36] Brandon Giella: Am I inspired to join the military? Did I just, is that what's happening to me right now? That's amazing.

[00:13:41] Ian Andersen: That, that is not the primary selling point, but you know.

[00:13:45] Brandon Giella: That's right. There are other ones. No, that's great. I'm curious. Okay, so Jessica, so you you are obviously a marketer, you're a professional doing this, but I want to know, as a traveler, how do you go about. Thinking. So now that you know the system you have been in the Matrix, you were hacking the mainframe, and, but now you're like booking travel to go somewhere.

How do you think about booking all the things that you want? Like you're, you know, obviously you need the flight, you need the hotel, you need the car, you need the experiences, whatever. How do you do that now as like a knowledgeable expert for us novices who don't know how to do this and don't know how the system works what's your like, recommendation or what's your process?

How do you go through this and like, think about it as a human being?

[00:14:29] Jessica Steinberg: Yeah. And so even though I've, you know, marketed vacation packages for a living for the past several years, I've always really been an a la carte booker. As much as I believe in the package business and how much great value you can get in it. But I always say I would look at price, but also the value that you're getting, whether you're booking a la carte or as a package.

You know, I've had instances where I've seen people in the airport, they booked the same thing, you know, with a package company and with Expedia, and they're getting. You know, almost the same product, but one of them is getting picked up at the airport when they get there and the other person is not.

And so yes, price matters, but also make sure you're comparing what you're getting. Are you know, is your bag free? You know, are you getting extra points on your credit card because you're booking with that specific airline in that specific card? And so it's not always necessarily just about the price.

Sometimes it might be worth paying a tiny bit more to get. That extra value when you're, you know, either in flight or when you get to your destination and things like that. So it's really, I could spend honestly hours planning a trip just going back and forth comparing 'cause there I find that, you know, whether it's a package or a la carte and nothing is truly apples to apples when you compare different options.

And so looking at, like I said, at both price and what you're getting for that price is really important.

[00:15:43] Brandon Giella: What comes to mind is as you're talking, it also might depend on your kinda lifestyle, your preferences, things like that. What you find as valuable. 'cause it's easy to one bag or zero bag if you're just like this. Bachelor, like single person, you're 20 and you can just go stay at a hostel or whatever.

But when you're, as I am an old man at 35 with two kids and a wife, and I need to travel to Charleston, which is where I am now, is why I have a different background today. And I have. Loads of bags that I cannot believe that I'm traveling with. I need like a cart, I need a pickup at the airport. I need, like, I need a hundred things that I did not need five years ago.

So I guess yeah, definitely your value criteria changes over time. So that's definitely a

[00:16:26] Ian Andersen: Especially with your, what, eight week old is that?

[00:16:29] Brandon Giella: Yeah. Right. Yes. Nine weeks now. Yeah. Yeah. Good

[00:16:32] Ian Andersen: It's incredible how like the pound of bag per pound of child ratio goes down over time. 'cause Yeah, I don't miss that.

[00:16:43] Brandon Giella: yes. Well, I'm deep into that right now. The pump and all the charging equipment and all the things that are in the suitcase and weighing it down, it's 48 and a half pounds. I just narrowly got under that 50 pound limit. Okay. I've been talking a lot. Rachel, Ian, I would love for y'all to jump in.

Like, I want to include you guys in this conversation.

[00:17:03] Rachel Satow: Well, one of, 

[00:17:04] Ian Andersen: said something that rang a cord. Sorry, Rachel. I'm trying to be mindful of your voice today, so that's, yeah. I'm not talking too much. The Jessica said something that, that's kind of hit a little close to home for me as being an a la carte traveler. I don't know if it's like. I internally, subconsciously just feel I can do it better than they can, you know, in putting my package together.

But the more I've worked in the travel industry, you know, now for several years and starts to meet more and more people like Jessica really putting stuff together it does make a lot of sense right to, to go the package route and especially with new technology and new tools available. You know, we talked a lot last week about AI being able to do a lot of this. I think people instinctively kind of understand that the personalization side of ai, but you know, it can do so much more in regards to, to like point versus cache optimization and even like a more technically on the airline side of like the route planning and ways for them to reduce costs as well.

And also something that I've thought a lot about over the last couple years that Jessica, I'm sure has thought a lot about is airlines are really good at one thing, right? And that's moving a plane from one place to another. They're not really that good at anything else. So. We've seen it over and over with different airlines having trouble early in their sort of reward and credit card phases, their, you know, their hotel offerings, things like that, that they tend to not do those very well and that makes sense 'cause they're a freaking airline.

So having somebody like Jessica and working at somewhere like Switch fly that works with airlines, the airlines can hire us to sort of. Manage that for them and put that all together for them. It makes the all around experience for the customer just so much better because then airlines can just focus on what they're good at and leave the rest of that to us.

[00:19:14] Brandon Giella: Yeah. To double down on that point. It seems like what I'm gathering from this conversation is not only does switch fly, help alleviate I guess that kind of strategic. Burden to market or to package or put these kind of offers together 'cause you guys will help with that and help put the technology and the implementation together so that a user can use that, but also it helps the user in that.

By packaging and bundling these kind of travel offerings so that the whole itinerary is covered within a package. It also helps the user, so it helps the airline, helps the user make that connection between, to Jessica's point, like make sure that value is there along that whole booking process, which is really cool.

That's.

[00:19:56] Rachel Satow: So something else as we consider how loyalty programs are potentially going to have to change specifically airline loyalty programs with the changing consumer market is knowing a la carte shoppers like Jessica, Ian, myself included. I

also an a la carte. I, we talked about this a little bit last week, but, having the ability to capture the attention before they're ready to book is vital. And when you have marketers like Jessica. Come to, to you to, you know, help you with marketing your loyalty program. The other side of it is having the technology to serve up and ensure that they can do the research on your platform without necessarily needing to book. And that's one thing that like, as we consider improvements to switch fly and where we can enhance with AI features, et cetera, like we're trying to capture more of that. Booking journey, that full research. Where should I go? What is the, you know, what neighborhood should I be staying in? To Jessica's point, way back at the beginning of this episode, you look at hotels in Cancun and they're hundreds of them that probably are all about the same, but one in one very. You know, Beachside area is going to be a much different experience than something that's a little bit more inland. And how can you compare that without technology, kind of like. Giving you that context. And so that's something that loyalty programs and as airline loyalty programs look to expand through dynamic packaging, et cetera, that is something to consider is just, do you have the technology to help capture the buyer's attention and the process that they're following before they're ready to book necessarily.

[00:21:47] Brandon Giella: I wonder it's a challenge with that, and this is just an. A random thought I'm having right now. I don't know how you would answer this, but I think the challenge with that is that, that whatever the AI platform would be, switch fly. In this case, it would have to know a lot of information about you as a user.

You know, like it would have to know, I have two kids, so please don't put me in like the bachelor pad. That's like, right. You know, it's like this tiny little minimal resort. Somewhere like it's gotta know certain context that could be helpful. But yeah I'm super looking forward to like having a little travel buddy, pun intended to help me like understand how to like book my trip, like the whole thing front to back would be super helpful.

[00:22:26] Ian Andersen: I, I, Brandon, I think that's a really interesting point that is a problem for both. AI systems probably more machine learning systems and loyalty programs is to get the maximum amount of rewards you need to use it more often. Right. So how do you. Encourage people early on when they're getting the minimal amount of reward from the system, how do you keep encouraging them and getting them to that point to where the first time you jump on switch, Brandon, they're gonna show you the little bachelor pad hostels that that, you know, you're like, that's 20 years beyond where I need, but by, you know, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth time you're there, it's starting to really learn you and understand your behavior. And you'll really start to get the rewards of having a really good machine learning program. How do you. How do you get people to commit to putting in that long-term effort when they're not getting the maximum rewards?

Right away.

[00:23:37] Brandon Giella: That to me sounds like the marketer's dilemma. Yeah, go ahead.

[00:23:42] Jessica Steinberg: Yeah, I mean, I think on the airline side, I, you know, totally agree. You need the customer to use it. But the really great thing about having the ability as an airline to package for customers is you already know so much about your customers that maybe other, you know, the Expedias of the world don't know, you know, what they search for, you know, what they book, you know, how they travel, and so.

Being able to kind of kickstarted from there, I think is huge. And it gives you, you know, a leg up as an airline to be able to offer customers something that, again, the larger Expedias of the world that aren't the airline can offer. And even beyond that, offering them value to, right, like if you're an airline, you can offer them something that Expedia cannot you can give them something extra in flight, you can give them extra points and things like that.

And so I think it's the onus is sometimes on the airline to, to make that happen.

[00:24:31] Brandon Giella: That's a great point. I feel like, you know, personalization and, you know, digitization and you know, using, it's like mass data has been around for. I think 10, 15 years, people have been talking about it really heavily, but we're now, we're entering this era where these AI tools are able to harness all of that data for the average person, you know, whether that's a user or let's say like, you know, middle management in an airline or whatever, to be able to think differently about how to harness that data.

And so we're entering this era where that data actually. Is becoming really usable at scale, across a wide variety of domains. I mean, just even earlier this morning I'm using Claude to like harness like Notion and Google Drive and my email and my task management platform to like pull together context around different projects or tasks or whatever.

And like I couldn't do that six months ago, like literally six months ago I couldn't do that. Now I've got this like project management. Executive assistant right at my right side, you know, and so I'm seeing that. I could see that being super, super helpful for for loyalty leaders that are trying to figure out like, okay, we've got all this data.

We've got billions and billions of rows and records of data. Like what do we do with that? And now you're able to really harness that in cool ways and. That itself becomes the differentiator between different airlines is how are they able to harness their data and present it, and for a user to make it useful for them as they're booking travel across a wide variety of of domains.

So yeah I'm really stoked about it. I think it's such an interesting era that we're entering into and many different fronts, which Ian and I, we can go back and forth on the history stuff we've talked about in different episodes but specifically for loyalty, it's really neat. So Jessica, we always in shows talking about our favorite travel experience.

So where have you gone lately or just sometime in your life that you really enjoyed? You should definitely go check out this city, go to this neighborhood, there's this great restaurant. Anything like that come to mind that listeners should know about that maybe they haven't thought of before?

[00:26:39] Jessica Steinberg: Yeah, I actually, so I've been, you know, around the block in the Caribbean. I live in South Florida, so getting to the Caribbean is very easy, very quick. I love it. And it's, a lot of the destinations are really similar. You know, you lay on the beach, you have a cocktail, you go to the spot, repeat. But what I found when I went to St.

Martin a couple years ago is it's actually a little bit different of a destination. And I absolutely loved it. It was, you know, a really delightful surprise. You get, you know, that beach aspect and you know. You can book snorkels, like snorkeling trips and boat rides and things like that. But then they also have, you know, a lot of culture with, you know, the two different sides, the Dutch and the French.

And you can kind of have two different vacations and the two sides really are kind of different. And so again, a surprise that I wasn't expecting, but I really enjoyed my trip there. And it's probably a place I would go back to for sure.

[00:27:23] Brandon Giella: Awesome. Okay.

[00:27:24] Ian Andersen: I was gonna lose it if she said Paris. 'Cause Paris tends to come up every single episode

[00:27:29] Brandon Giella: I love Paris. What can I say?

[00:27:31] Ian Andersen: I, I don't know if counting a former French colony counts or not, but

[00:27:37] Brandon Giella: Well, if they have bag hats, I'm in. Just call me Saint Martins. I'm there. French and Dutch. Right? There's a, they have a split anyway.

[00:27:45] Ian Andersen: Yep.

Yeah. And it's spelled, it's the same. It's St. Martin, but isn't it spelled differently, like the same island spelled like depending on which part of the island, island you're on.

[00:27:55] Brandon Giella: I think the Dutch side is what A, it's M-A-A-R-T-E-N. It's like

[00:28:00] Ian Andersen: Yeah, there's like a whole ton of vowels in there for some odd

[00:28:03] Brandon Giella: way too many. Yeah, it was same thing with French. Oh my gosh. An hor d'oeuvre come on. Kills me. So, okay. Anything else Rachel and Ian especially. Anything else that I we should have talked about maybe didn't, that our listeners would really love to know about this topic.

We have

[00:28:18] Ian Andersen: I do have one. I have one. When pulling together some of the resources and looking into to this show something keeps popping up about roughly 50% depending on what study you're looking at. 50% of loyalty members aren't. Very active and are not using their points. There's a ton depend, again, depending on what study you look at literally billions of dollars of unused points in the airline reward space.

What are your thoughts? Like, is that, I don't know, Jessica, is that the user's problem for just not following through, is that the airlines aren't doing a good job informing people how to use their points. Something else that I'm not thinking of.

[00:29:06] Jessica Steinberg: I think it honestly goes back to the different kind of traveler. I know, you know, in my past airline experience. There are a lot of customers that, yes, they have un use points, but they're really low point values. And so those are customers that my guess would be, are completely and totally price driven.

They go on Google Flights, the cheapest flight, they book it, that's it, they don't care. They're probably not bringing a carry on, and if they get the points, great, if not, they're not even, they may not even be logged in when they book. And I think some of those customers will just. Always exist. I don't know that you'll ever convince them to, you know, to pay attention.

I have some family members like that. They're like, points, what do you mean? Versus me who's, you know, I've got all the credit cards and I'm, you know, doing the math to figure out which one makes the most sense. And so I think some of those customers is just about different behaviors and what they care about.

And for them, lowest price is king no matter what. That's how I view them.

[00:29:59] Brandon Giella: that's really helpful. I, despite what I said earlier, I'm kind of a lowest price shopper, but I do have, I've said this before, the American Express Platinum got some points there. I've got points on American Airlines, big fan. I live in DFW, so Americans right there fly all over, but I don't always know how to use the points.

I think Ian, to your point, like, is that a user error? It's definitely a user error. I don't know what to do with them. Sometimes I've got like 47,000 points or something. I don't know what to do. So, but maybe that's on

[00:30:28] Ian Andersen: Yeah, the points always. I have a United Chase card 'cause I'm in and outta Chicago a lot, so, but again, it's like you see these abstract numbers of like a hundred thousand points or whatever. Or a hundred thousand miles. That, that one always gets me. I'm like, a hundred thousand miles. I should be able to go around the earth several times.

Right. But I can't even get to Cleveland, you know, like, it can be a little confusing at times, so,

[00:30:55] Brandon Giella: That's great. Maybe you can get to St. Martin if you combine cash and points, you know you can get there. Great. Well guys, thanks so much.

[00:31:04] Ian Andersen: Martin.

[00:31:05] Brandon Giella: St. Martin, St. Al. Yeah. So thank you guys so much for joining. As always, Jessica, thank you for joining the show for the first time.

Appreciate your expertise, as always, would love to have you back and talk more about maybe some more marketing trends as they're developing, and ways that loyalty providers could apply some, you know, maybe different positioning or campaigns or headlines, even if you get into that kind of stuff.

I like that kind of stuff sometimes. But yeah, otherwise we will see all of you on the next. Episode, we'll see you then. Thanks so much.

[00:31:35] Jessica Steinberg: Awesome. Thanks for having me.