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Welcome to Travel Buddy
In this episode, Rachel Satow and Ian Andersen explore what truly makes travel loyalty programs resonate with customers today. Drawing on personal stories and industry expertise, they discuss why loyalty planning should pivot from point systems to the real-life journeys and emotions of travelers. You’ll hear how cross-functional teamwork, memorable customer experiences, and emotional connection can transform retention strategies in a crowded marketplace. If you’re looking to rethink loyalty through a more human and holistic lens, this conversation offers practical insights and a fresh perspective.
Transcript
Brandon Giella (00:01.814)
What if loyalty planning didn't start with tiers or points, but with the traveler's mindset at the moment of booking? Today we're talking about more human forward loyalty programs around decision points and the way that humans actually work. And I wanted to start with a story before we jump in with Rachel and Ian. Lovely to have you. And the story is a couple of weeks ago, I was traveling for Christmas and I am
on a major airline and I'm going through the booking process and I'm adding in a infant in lap and I made the mistake before of adding four travelers from my family, one of whom is an infant and I had to pay for him and that was a mistake because it's expensive and he should be free. He is free. I just made a mistake. So this time I didn't add that that way. I tried a different way and the UI on the website is confusing to me.
but I've done this at least 15 times with children. So I should be good at this. And then I select my seats and then I get to the kiosk where you have to go to the kiosk because of the way the lines are arranged. And I type in all my information because I have to do that. That's what the process, that's what they tell me when I get there. And then I have to, I'm flagged because I have an infant and I have car seats.
So then I go to the line to talk to somebody and I am there for 45 minutes. I am the last person to board the plane. They were about to close the door, they're calling overhead, I'm the last person. And the reason is I did not put in my son's information into the UI, the dashboard that I was presented with, never asked me to do that. But the teller, the person behind the desk was...
seemingly annoyed at me because I didn't call them beforehand. But there I am and we had to re-judge all of our tickets because the way that the plane is arranged there are two seats on either side of the aisle and because we have an infant in lap the weight distribution on this particular aircraft was wrong because there was an infant who weighs 20 pounds and that 20 pounds was too much for the right side of the plane. So they split all of us up.
Ian Andersen (02:24.333)
off.
Brandon Giella (02:27.234)
So my two year old is at the front of the plane. My wife is in the middle and I'm in the back. My wife has the infant. And they told me, well, we can't do this kind of arrangement because of this particular aircraft. Like I'm supposed to know that. So we go through this whole rigmarole and I came to a decision about my future travel. And the decision is I'm going to buy a private jet because I don't want to deal with any of that anymore.
So that's a small story about human design and thinking about the customer journey and these little edge cases that don't fit within the prescribed either dashboards or checkout processes or kiosks or lines or whatever it is to buy a plane ticket to go from A to B. And I think that's relevant for our story today because we were talking about
Why loyalty planning should start with the traveler and not the program? Because often when we're designing these kinds of things, we think about the mechanics of the program and not through the lens of the traveler. And those should be flipped. Granted, this is very hard to do sometimes for certain companies. There's a lot of people involved. There's huge amounts of decisions that must be made. But we're opening up the conversation to talk about what would it look like if we
led with the customer, the traveler first, rather than the program first. So with that, Amoos Boosh. Rachel, I'm going to turn it over to you. Talk to us about this topic today. I would love to hear what your thoughts are here.
Rachel Satow (04:03.565)
You
Rachel Satow (04:10.069)
Yeah, before I do that, I have a story of my own that your story spurred. So I recently booked a trip to New York and I'm using points for my ticket, but I wasn't going to... I didn't have enough points to purchase the other two tickets in my party. And the whole experience was so annoying because I had to do two different...
Transactions I had to do the one where I utilized my points to purchase my ticket and then I had to go back in Completely like log in log out situation and then go buy the other two tickets with my card Which was you know, it was I'm not gonna name names, but it was a major airline that that experience was was what I what I had for when I was booking these tickets and I couldn't help but think this is
this should be easier, why is it not easier? And I think, you know, both stories go really well with what we're talking about today because loyalty teams have a responsibility to think about what the end user is going to experience when interacting with their program. Oftentimes, loyalty teams will start their planning with constraints, you know, what are the points budgets, what are the tier thresholds, what are the redemption rules, et cetera, but...
Ian Andersen (05:03.567)
you
Brandon Giella (05:04.377)
Yes.
Rachel Satow (05:29.855)
Travelers like you and I, we don't experience loyalty that way. We experience the stress, we experience the anticipation, the urgency, the relief when we finally get on the plane and we're ready to go. So I think both stories kind of showcase the proof point here that we're talking about, which is if you are to start your planning with whatever
the intent is, whatever the traveler goal is. Whether that be, you are looking to increase some sort of feature usage, why aren't users utilizing that feature? Think about why people aren't going and utilizing certain things. You wanna make sure that you're planning.
with the end goal in mind. And we've talked about this a little bit. And you in particular had mentioned it on one of the last podcasts where you need to think about what you want the end user to be doing, what your end goal is, and then identify the stop gaps that are preventing them from actually doing those things.
Brandon Giella (06:39.203)
That's right. That's right. One of the things that you had mentioned in your notes is thinking that human beings, travelers, are much more dynamic than these programs often are. Our stories illustrate that.
But then there's a way to reframe this so that we think through the traveler's lens. And there's a couple of things mentioned here, which is trip intent, decision moments, emotional context. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? then Ian, I want to hear your thoughts as well in that segment, but to talk about what are the ways that we can be thinking about that when we're thinking about designing loyalty programs and figuring out the business mechanics of it, of course, but that maybe there's some pillars to be thinking
about this year.
Rachel Satow (07:26.945)
Yeah, I mean...
I hold that all of us are travelers, right? So think of the experience that you and I both just described. When you are going about the process of making, you know, certain goals or KPIs for your program, or even just introducing new features, et cetera, I think it is worth taking a beat and just thinking about the experiences that you have with your own travel journeys and what are the things that you really enjoyed from either your company.
or another company? What are the things that, you know, we're a pain in the butt to utilize? When you, when we think about the traveler intent, we know that their goal is to go on the trip, to have a good time on their trip. How can you enhance that? How can you make sure that they're engaging with the things that will make their trip more memorable for them?
Ian Andersen (08:30.466)
I think so this topic, it's kind of at a nexus of like several different issues that a lot of organizations have. When we kind of first were spitballing ideas and thinking about this topic, maybe think of the problem that companies have.
and keeping their teams aligned as far as like, often marketing can be pretty disconnected from the product team versus what the sales team's doing versus what operations are doing and getting those teams aligned.
is essential for just sort of a healthy organization. It might be useful for marketing to know what the product roadmap looks like, right? So they have some idea of the messaging. And the same goes with your loyalty team. Whoever's working on loyalty on the product side needs to be involved in the marketing process, in the sales process, product.
planning and engineering planning and something else that might be a little weird to articulate but I think it makes intuitive sense is loyalty programs in its nature deal with returning customers right like that's just the nature of the loyalty program
returning customers obviously varies slightly percentage wise industry by industry, but returning customers generally account for the vast majority of revenue in an organization. know, you know, usually on the low side of like 60%, sometimes, you know, 90, 95 % right as repeat business. Yet so much, especially marketing, but often
Ian Andersen (10:39.824)
you know sales or other budgets are geared towards new customer acquisition rather than Getting and maintaining healthy relationships with returning customers There's sort of a a okay. We got them. We're good now like you don't need to keep nurturing that along Loyalty programs are meant to address that and in part right they're meant to keep that customer engagement
yet just a loyalty program in itself isn't going to do that. You know, the purpose of a loyalty program is to offer special discounts, deals, rewards, you know, whatever to your customer base. implicit in that is the actual product itself, right? So whether it's booking or the, the
actually going somewhere, the transportation method or hotel or whatever it is. If those are not up to snuff, like, it really undercuts the entire point of having a loyalty program, you know, and undercuts that the that customer retention that is generally so valuable to a customer or to a to a company, you know, if that is
say more than 50, say it's 50%, you know, on the low end, 50 % of your revenue is repeat business. Why wouldn't you do everything you can to make your, your customers happy, you know, after that initial purchase, you know, people have shown the key theme of this podcast has been kind of the historical nature of loyalty of how people generally want to be.
part of a loyalty program, not necessarily because the program's so great. People, if you buy a product, you like the product, you want to just stick with the product, right? It's just easier. It's human nature. Loyalty programs make that easier and they help differentiate when the market is as full as it is with competitors. So it's easier for you just to make a nice user experience.
Ian Andersen (13:07.962)
from beginning to end for your loyalty program, for those repeat customers, especially the ones that value you enough to join your loyalty program, it just makes intuitive sense that you want to put the user and customer experience at the heart of what your loyalty program is. The only reason it's there for is to be a good customer experience.
So it really has to be involved in the product department's plans and operations. It's got to be involved in the marketing. It's got to be involved in sales. Sort of the whole customer journey. Loyalty's got to be a part of it, just so they're getting the best information from the other departments so they're involved in the planning. If products getting ready to launch and you're like,
wait a second, that might be easy for a new customer, but it's kind of is a crappy experience for returning one. That message needs to be put into the organization so they can make the best decisions.
Brandon Giella (14:22.466)
I would argue that cross-functional collaboration is itself a challenge. How do you surface all that knowledge and coordinate? I mean, that is a challenge, the best organizations in the world are ones that do that really well.
Rachel Satow (14:22.54)
Yeah, and I think.
Rachel Satow (14:35.552)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think when you think about reframing through the traveler lens, which is something that we would definitely recommend, traditional loyalty programs or the planning sequence, they define the tiers. They define the earn and burn rules. They then layer offers on top of that. But that is an assumption that loyalty is rational and predictable. And in 2026, all of that's out the window. So when you think about the traveler's perspective there,
They're going to compare cross platforms instantly because of all of the tools that they have at their fingertips these days. They're going to book closer to departure. We're seeing that with our own data and they're going to switch brands when brands can't, especially from a repeat visitors or member perspective, if brands can't surface what they're looking for, when they're looking for it. And that it drives, you know, real consequences like
Brandon Giella (15:30.562)
Thanks for your time.
Rachel Satow (15:34.738)
you have a huge disruption in your booking flow, you've got a great rewards catalog perhaps, but there's no assistance in showcasing how they can redeem those things. It goes unutilized when you don't think about it from the traveler mindset.
Ian Andersen (15:49.882)
you
Brandon Giella (15:53.291)
Yeah, to put meat on that is I'm one datum, of course, but my experience that I had a few weeks ago, I'm like, I don't know if I want to keep booking with this airline. know, it's like not that anything was particularly bad. It was just like I got stuck there for it took an hour longer than it really should have. And I just didn't, I just didn't like it. I want something that's easier.
Ian Andersen (15:53.465)
And I-
Rachel Satow (16:03.142)
Right? Right.
Ian Andersen (16:04.132)
break.
Rachel Satow (16:11.382)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ian Andersen (16:14.692)
Well, and to your point of it not being particularly bad when the marketplace is flooded with competition, not particularly bad is a major differentiator, right? Like, and what, what it is hard to understand as far as a, from a planning perspective of why companies get this wrong so often is,
Brandon Giella (16:21.09)
You know, yeah.
Brandon Giella (16:26.039)
Yeah.
Ian Andersen (16:40.6)
Say we're starting a brand new program from scratch. We have to build our not only the nuts and bolts of the loyalty program, but the user interface for where they're booking or you know, whatever it is. We have to do that anyway, no matter what. So you can either do it from the customer perspective and take that into account to begin with or do it from the program perspective. And then you sort of get what you get on the output and
Brandon Giella (16:54.786)
Yeah.
Ian Andersen (17:11.074)
Either way, you have to do basically the same amount of work, right? So it's not any harder to just do it from your customer perspective. know, have somebody on the team literally belay a difficult customer, whether it's, you know, they're not technically savvy, whether they're, you know, very picky, whether they need their handheld every step of the way, whatever it is.
Brandon Giella (17:28.577)
Yeah.
Ian Andersen (17:39.01)
and just have them role play that role and build the program, including the user interface platform using, you know, the customer service perspective, you know, whatever it is, have them build it from that direction. You're putting the same amount of work in and you've already taken all that, that those issues into account. I mean, Brandon, like to your point, to your story, like you're hardly
Brandon Giella (17:45.483)
That's right.
Brandon Giella (18:00.706)
That's right.
Ian Andersen (18:07.3)
this weird edge case, right? People have lap children all the time. Like it should be part of the game plan to be like, okay, even if it's, you know, 5%, 10 % or whatever, that's a lot of people who are going to have a lap child. how, how that question needs to come up at some point and what that experience is should be taken into account.
Brandon Giella (18:21.249)
Cheers. Yeah.
Brandon Giella (18:29.321)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Giella (18:32.897)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, know, security and engineering teams have what they call a red team. And so they build into the process before they publish something to production that the red team is going to go in and try to break something. They're going to hack it. going to try to break it. They're going to overload the system somehow. So I think having a step in the process where you have somebody try to break it. I volunteer as tribute. I will bring my toddler. She's going to be smushing her bunny all over the floor while I'm talking to the person at the behind the counter.
Now granted, this is the booking and boarding process and not the loyalty process, but those things are related. I feel more loyal to a brand that has a lot of this customer experience kind of sorted out. And granted, it is a challenge. It is not easy to get right. But I think what's maybe is a useful heuristic, there's this book that I read, I listened to a few years ago called The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. And they talk about some of these things and thinking about the customer.
journey and how you can create a memorable moment that leaves a lasting impression on the buyer, on the customer, the traveler in this case. So what they talk about is one of their, this is a AI summary from Google by the
because it's been a while since I listened to this book. But the core idea, says, is creating defining moments, which are brief, memorable, meaningful experiences that shape our lives and memories. And so you can design those. This is not something that just happens. You can design them in the system. And so it says there's four elements to do that. Elevation, insight, pride, and connection. And what they mean by that is elevation is you make it rise above the ordinary. So this was an ordinary experience for me in traveling, say.
Brandon Giella (20:18.243)
I was just going, know, it was a Christmas vacation, you know, and I had my family with me, pretty normal flight typically. But maybe there was something in there that could have made it special, like they could have handed me a key chain, you know, or something that had a Christmas tree on it. don't know, you know. But, and then there's insights, you make it meaningful by sparking a sudden realization. And then there's pride, where you make it feel significant. It's something, this is something that's important to me. It's Christmas, you know, for example.
And then there's connection. You make it shared through shared meaning relationships and things like that. And then they've got this rule called the peak end rule. So think about the peak experience of that journey and think about the end of that journey to leave that kind of impression as they're exiting the customer journey. They get to their destination, for example.
And then they also talk about flipping pits, which is turning negative experiences into positive ones through great service and recovery. So I had this experience and it would have been great if the customer service person behind the desk was like, you know what? I'm sorry, this is so hard. Instead of almost getting frustrated with me and saying, you should have called, you should have called last week to like talk, call the airline next time ahead of time, which I'm thinking in my head, I'm to be on the phone for two hours talking about this. I got two little kids and a business. I can't do this, you know? So anyway,
So there's some moments there that I think it kind of forms this framework that may be helpful. I'm curious what you guys, have you read that book? Have you thought about this kind of like thing like that? Maybe a framework that's useful.
Ian Andersen (21:51.888)
I've never read that. It does sound interesting though. I just Googled it to save later, but it does bring up the point. think kind of going back to my last point of this really needs to be plugged into sort of every part of your business, right? Like the customer service aspect of things is just another touch point that needs to be involved in the.
in the loyalty and vice versa planning and prep because nothing helps or hurts a business more with repeat customers than customer service, right? Like more directly. Everyone has horror stories of dealing with customer service, whether they're on, you know, the phone for five hours or, but often the stories you hear
or very good experiences with customer service. I just, for example, we went skiing a few years ago. My son, we rented.
I'm not going to buy them new stuff because their shoe size changes every 10 minutes. so so we always rent equipment. We got up to the mountain and you know, shame on us for not necessarily checking immediately. But it turns out the place we rented from gave them to write boots like right foot boots. So.
Brandon Giella (23:08.833)
Yeah.
Brandon Giella (23:26.054)
Ha
That's the worst.
Ian Andersen (23:29.968)
I was pissed, the mountain was booked, it was really busy. They have the rental place at the mountain, but that line is always crazy, so I never go there. But I called the place that we had rented from and they were like, just so appalled, you we're so sorry. They're like, give me five minutes, let me call you right back. They immediately called back.
They had called the mountain rental shop and were like, get these people to the front of your line, give them new boots, and then, you know, get them out of there and like, we'll handle it on the back end kind of thing. They called me back, told me what was going to happen. Like, I will rent from them every single time we go there for the rest of my life, right? Like just that one experience that, and we'd rented from them before, like, and I'd never had a bad.
Brandon Giella (24:03.68)
Wow.
Brandon Giella (24:16.436)
Yep. Yep.
Ian Andersen (24:26.583)
experience to begin with, but like just the way you take care of problems, you just created like a very loyal customer. And I know they're not staying in business because of my, my business alone. But if I'm just some random nobody and they're treating me, you know, that well, when, when mistakes happen, like I get it, mistakes happen. And I think most people understand that, you know, I don't think they intentionally tried to screw us over there.
but you know, mistake happened. They jumped on it and fixed it immediately. You've created an extremely loyal customer. And if you do that enough times, your business is fine and healthy.
Rachel Satow (25:02.795)
you
Rachel Satow (25:09.479)
Yeah, I think your example is really speaking to the fact that loyalty drivers are emotional first and economic second. They said to you, we'll handle it on the back end, doesn't matter, get them to the front of the line so that they can have a better experience and get out of the way. It truly is, loyalty drivers are emotional first and economic second and programs often, I mean to your earlier point,
programs often optimize for lifetime value, for a customer lifetime value, whereas travelers and customers in general optimize for this moment, this trip, not 10 trips ago, not 10 trips from now, it's this trip that matters to them. So Brandon, to your point regarding mapping some moments that matter, that's the first step that.
Brandon Giella (25:38.464)
That's right.
Brandon Giella (25:48.448)
That's right.
Rachel Satow (25:58.174)
any program should do in trying to reframe for the traveler lens. What are the moments that matter most to our members, to our travelers? What are the points where there's high emotion, high friction, high consequence? These moments are often outside of traditional loyalty dashboards.
Brandon Giella (26:19.072)
That's right. It really is. It's not thinking about perks and points. It's thinking about the real human being that is experiencing this journey, going through this process. And again, having a red team, having a secret shopper, having somebody go in and do this, get feedback, customer feedback through, obviously like standard forms and phone calls and things like that. But customer service is a huge component of that.
Rachel Satow (26:48.755)
Yeah.
Brandon Giella (26:49.026)
And I love Ian's, your story.
Rachel Satow (26:54.247)
I mean, even if you don't have a brick and mortar for this, for your program, you can still find the gaps in behavioral data and in service data. And you can find those moments that matter in the data that your program is typically collecting as well as on the ground moments.
Brandon Giella (27:05.088)
That's right.
Brandon Giella (27:16.312)
That's And I have a bet, I would be willing to bet, and I'll caveat this by saying this is a privileged thing to say, and I'm at this point in my life where...
I want this, not everybody is. But I would be willing to pay more for a better experience across the board. Whether it's a coffee shop down the street, it's a software tool, or it's a loyalty program or an airline ticket or a hotel or whatever, I would be willing, add 20 % to it, 30%. But I want it to be a delight.
to go and do my life. I was reading this thing the other day that somebody was like, they were talking about an immigrant that they were trying to help them do some things related to work and life and some things. And this person, this immigrant was saying, I feel like you have to have a PhD to get anything done in America. And I was like, no kidding. It does feel like that so often, whether it's scheduling a doctor's appointment or whatever. It's like, got up, there's five phone calls, 10 forms, a legal waiver. I had to sign a legal waiver at a restaurant the other day because they had a play place for the kids.
And I literally had to sit there, it was like a 10, 15 page legal document, and I had to sign it before they would let me do anything in the restaurant. It's a restaurant.
Ian Andersen (28:33.597)
like everyone as a litigation expert, right? Yeah, personal injury expert.
Brandon Giella (28:36.938)
Yes!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a unique thing to America. But the point is, I'm willing to pay the money to make this easy. And I'm not alone in that, I think.
Ian Andersen (28:49.838)
No, I think most people, mean, otherwise, frontier and spirit would dominate the market, right? Like, I mean, they're not to like call anyone out there. Like there's very good places for budget options for travel for everything. But like the majority of people have an expectation of customer service. If your business model is discount, well,
Brandon Giella (28:58.59)
Yes, yeah, right. Yeah.
Ian Andersen (29:19.488)
I understand I'm going to be getting less of a customer experience, but if you're kind of in that whatever your sort of tier level is as an organization with your competitors, there is an expectation of customer service. And I think you're exactly right. think most people are willing to spend a little bit more.
to know that they have, they're going to have a better customer experience. and I don't even think it necessarily needs to be that much better. Right? It's just, I know it's going to be, I know if I go to a different rental place, the next time we go skiing, it's probably going to be about the same. I know that if there's a problem, the other company, they might not handle it as well, but they'll handle it, you know, how somewhere, but.
Brandon Giella (29:55.624)
Yeah, yeah, agreed.
Ian Andersen (30:14.296)
Just because I have a certain expectation now, right, that business is going to get my patronage, right? So I think you're exactly right.
Brandon Giella (30:31.689)
Well, as we wrap up this discussion, we're going to have a few little tangents there. My doing. Apologies. What are you guys, any kind of takeaways or anything to leave some of these leaders with that are thinking about their loyalty programs this year, thinking about designing, thinking about their overall business, especially in the travel space, but any other kind of closing thoughts or final words?
Rachel Satow (30:55.691)
I I think, you know, we're at the start of the year. It's a worthwhile activity. If you didn't do it at the end of this year, do it now in Q1 before things really get crazy and take a moment to walk through your customer journey. Highlight the moments that are those high emotion moments for your users and showcase how you react to them.
in any given moment at any given stage, whether that's pre-trip, in the middle of it, post-trip, however, know, those moments show up. And then, you know, take note that creating moments that matter doesn't mean that you need to offer more discounts. It doesn't mean that you need to reward certain things. And sometimes it does show up as customer service. Ian and I, a while ago, read a book
Brandon Giella (31:44.735)
Yes.
Rachel Satow (31:54.38)
called the cult of the customer that goes into all of the different experiences a customer can go into when interacting with your business, when interacting with the individuals who represent your business. And I think making sure that those touch points are mapped out alongside the high emotion moments will be really worthwhile in identifying where your loyalty program can kind of step in to enhance the experience.
Ian Andersen (32:24.43)
Yeah, I think it's more of a mindset than a major shift or a major reorganization. Maybe that's the way to think about it is we're going to have to build a product and a user interface and payment platform and everything else anyway. We ought to do all this stuff anyway. How do we do it? Like, how do we look at building it? So
it's not necessarily changing operations significantly, just how do we go about planning? And if you can start with the customer and think about them sort of every step of the way, you know, that that really helps out on the back end of that process. And it helps across the board. And then just my point earlier of get
Everyone involved having a working team of of people who meet once every other week once a week once a month whatever Have a working team from various departments who even if all they do is sit around and BS and talk about what their department's doing like That's a value add, know, just keep everybody in the loop of what's going on and and
You know that that helps across the departments. You'll never know. I remember when I first started at Switch Fly reaching out to one of our product teams. You know this was years ago but just sort of like we were talking about something else and they just kind of casually threw out a new feature that had been added to the platform that I had no idea existed and I was like that's incredible like
I want to write four blog posts and put out some ads and everything about this specific thing. Please tell me the more time, you know, next time you have other things like that, you know, and so often teams are so disconnected that they don't know what's going on and think of your loyalty team as one of the teams that need to be involved.
Brandon Giella (34:30.209)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Giella (34:45.375)
That's right. Yeah, that's great advice. Again, know, easier said than done, but I think it is one of the core things that businesses should take on, especially in this travel space, because it is at root, it's about hospitality. It's about people feeling welcome, at ease, and making sure they have a wonderful trip. again, know, easier said than done, but really, really core and very, very important. Yeah.
Ian Andersen (35:05.092)
break.
Brandon Giella (35:12.445)
Rachel, Ian, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for this topic. I think it's fascinating. And I hope that the stories we've been telling will inspire folks to think about those high moments for customers as they're going through their journey. And it can really make a difference. So thank you both, and we'll see you next time.
Ian Andersen (35:28.302)
Awesome. Thanks, Brandon. Bye.
Rachel Satow (35:30.079)
Thanks, Brandon.
