Make Your Loyalty Program Visible to AI: Here's How to Improve It

AI agents can already book travel directly. That raises a hard question for loyalty programs. If a customer books through an agent instead of a portal, does their loyalty status even factor in?

Ian Andersen joins to unpack how agentic booking works today and how it optimizes almost entirely on price. He walks through the standards emerging to change that, including Google's Universal Commerce Protocol and Talon's Universal Incentives Protocol. Both are starting to make loyalty data machine-readable. The conversation covers what program and product leaders should prioritize now and why waiting has a real cost.

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

Brandon Giella: Okay, welcome back to Travel Buddy by Switchfly. We are gonna talk today about how your loyalty program is invisible to AI. As we know, AI is changing everything. It is the topic that virtually every podcast on Earth is about at the moment right now, which is fine. But, uh, there is a, a change in the way that people are booking travel, and we wanted to talk about it, so we've got Ian here, uh, to, to give us the lowdown. And so essentially what I'm understanding is in Google AI, Google's, you know, AI Overviews feature, you can now book a hotel within that feature. Which raises the question, what if people don't actually go to your loyalty program portal or your travel booking portal or the actual thing where we're going and choosing the hotel and clicking on dates and making the selection ourselves? What if it's becoming a lot more What if we're just talking to some of these tools and it's booking for us? I know there are some tools out there, I think Muse of them that I've been reading about, and then there's another one that I just read about, where you literally are, like, texting or talking to your AI agent, and it's going and booking things for you using plumbing of other tools. Who knows how this is happening? We don't actually know. So Ian, you know. Talk to me

Ian Andersen: That's

Brandon Giella: is going on. What is the shift that you're seeing here and, and what is this thinking about? H-how do you guys think about travel now in the age of AI at Switchfly?

Ian Andersen: Sure. Um, well, thanks, Brandon. Uh, and thanks for the confidence in, in believing that I know 'cause,

Brandon Giella: everything, Ian

Ian Andersen: if the, uh, if the engineers at, uh, Anthropic and OpenAI and them don't know, then I'm for sure lost. But, uh, no, I, I mean, you, you, you hit the nail on the head, right? Is, is… And this has obviously been, on the roadmap and, and in people's sort of like long-term horizons for what AI would get to as far as not only, providing information, but actually acting upon that information on, on someone's behalf. you know, we've, we've all known this kind of thing is coming. I think it's coming faster than people might have necessarily thought. I mean, just looking back at the conversations we've had over the past couple years on AI, you know, it's, uh, the, the progress has been, uh, astounding, you know, for how rapidly things have changed. and this is kind of the next step in it. Like, like you mentioned, Google, as of now, as of the end of August, an agent can actually book on your behalf, through the, the Google travel platform. there's still some kinks to be worked out. the, like you can't, it won't book independent hotels, and some other, other qualifiers. But, you know, Sabre, PayPal, and Mindtrip earlier this year would, announce they have an end-to-end agentic booking, pipeline, right? that they have with their, uh, with a lot of their internal connectors. so this is clearly where things are headed directionally. So it, causes some problems for, loyalty programs, as you mentioned, like if they're booking direct, if the agent's booking direct, are they, you know, w-where does the, your loyalty, program fit in? Where, can a customer find and use their rewards? Things like that are a little up in the air at the moment. Right now, the way agentic booking is working is it's optimizing based on, very narrow restrictions on price availability. You know, if you put in certain dates and times and whatever your criteria on, it's then essentially optimizing for price, maybe one or two other things like, number of layovers you have, an air or, or, hotel, star rating if, if you limit the, you know, I want three-star and above or, or whatever. but that-- those very narrow optimizations leave out things like rewards points, you know, booking preferences, historical booking preferences, things like that. and I think that's where this next step in the, the evolution of AI booking is headed, is being able to, uh, make loyalty programs readable to, AI agents and not only readable, but, but sort of interchangeable, if you will, um, between various AI platforms, and creating some sort of standardization that the AI will take into account the rewards and loyalty aspect of the booking they're trying to make, right? And it becomes another Another variable in the, the optimization, program, right? So if, for example, the lowest cost airline A is the lowest clo- cost, you know, on the surface, but you have a bunch of rewards, uh, you know, a bunch of points saved up with airline B, which then would make, if you factor that into the equation, would then make the airline B's, flight, more cost-effective. how do we get-- how do we bubble up that information to where the AI, is, is making that determination as well? and so, so program managers and, product managers at travel, platforms that, uh, when they're thinking about how their system is set up, need to start taking that into account and, uh, and optimizing their platform for not only, somebody going to book manually, but also so an agent, reads their information correctly and can make those, those same evaluations when booking, as well.

Brandon Giella: It sounds simple to say, you know, kind of in an idea of like, uh, yeah, we need to optimize our platforms and, and this is the, the way that the technology's going. But I have, uh, Switchfly CEO Noel Outlaw in my head saying, "It's-- this is really complicated stuff to

Ian Andersen: Sure

Brandon Giella: It's kind of like seeing, um, uh, you know, like you have an iPhone and it's like, oh, I wanna like something to my screen, or like I'm taking a call here, sending a message here. It's like wiring to my AirPods or to my watch or what. Like, all that is actually really hard to do, and it's hard for a company to map all those things together. I guess, um, I, I guess the question is like, is this like who sets the, the standard or the plumbing? Like h-h-how does this actually happen? Like, 'cause I know like the Switchfly platform, you guys have been building this thing for twenty years

Ian Andersen: Yeah

Brandon Giella: all these, the, the pieces together, and it's really, really hard to get right. What, h-how do you think about the plumbing, but also like do you have encouragement for people that might be overwhelmed at the pace and the speed of technology at the moment?

Ian Andersen: I don't know if I have encouragement. I have sympathy for people overwhelmed.

Brandon Giella: Sympathy

Ian Andersen: yeah, 'cause, 'cause believe me, I feel it as well.

Brandon Giella: Yeah, I'm sure

Ian Andersen: the The heart of the question, you're right, this is incredibly complex stuff, right, And it's, it's why, the… It's why the AI hasn't taken over yet, right?

Brandon Giella: Yeah,

Ian Andersen: of, uh, if, if it were more simple, you and I would be out painting in a field and enjoying life while all our agents run around taking care of everything else, right? Already. So,

Brandon Giella: I

Ian Andersen: so for, as simple as it sounds, there are a lot of nuts and bolts and, and like you mentioned, you know, we've been in business for over 20 years. you know, other booking platforms have been out there for a long time. Obviously, individual, hotel chains and, and airlines and, uh, activity, you know, amusement parks and things like that, they've all been around a very long time and, uh, over time have had to change the way their models operate to sort of fit in with whatever the current, platform or situation technology, is. And, and this is no different in that it virtually always happens somewhat organically in that somebody-- there'll be two different solutions that come up, uh, or, or avenues to do this. one may or may not be slightly better, you know, what- for whatever the reason it tends to edge out the other, and then a standard is created. and then over time, everybody sort of go- goes onto that standard. I think the, the way to think about it, uh, just for context, Google has something called the Universal Commerce Protocol, right? It's their… It's basically their guidelines for, for anyone selling anything, on the internet, through their website or a platform or, or whatever. If you set things up in this particular format, it makes it easy for Google to read and therefore, easy for transactions to be made. they are, they have something called a identity linking capability in that, a, they're trying to optimize for AI, to be able to function with the, those Universal Commerce Protocol, uh, protocols that they've outlined, and make it sort of a standard, across the board. Google is Google, right? They are the, still the sort of number one search, uh, and, and entry point for most people on the internet. however, there's also another one called Talon.one, uh, another company called Talon.one, that has launched a universal incentives protocol, which is sort of similar to the, the Google's universal commerce, but it's kind of more d- uh, refined towards loyalty programs. the point I'm trying to make is there are different avenues. However, most of those things have a lot in common as far as even if you go down one route right now, the, the legwork you're putting in to, to set up to go down that route will be transferable to a different route, you know. if your-- Say, take your, your conversion ratio, uh, the way you calculate your, your currency, between, you know, dollars and points or whatever. if you're, if you're structuring that in such a way to be readable by one of these, these agents, by definition, it's gonna be structured in a way for something else to read it as well, right? So, so say there, there is some startup comes up with this magic solution next year that all e-com, becomes the standard for all e-com on the internet, or the government regulates a certain way to do it or, or whatever. There are certain basic things that you have to do no matter what, that will be able to sort of plug into whatever the plumbing, as you call it, to make it readable for, for agentic commerce. I hope that was

Brandon Giella: Yeah, I guess if I could m- kind of back up, and maybe there's some listeners that are, you know, they're, they're loyalty leaders, but they're not on the tech side, not on the engineering or product side. It's kind of like there's all these kinda standard formats we have on the internet that we don't think about much anymore, like HTTPS, you know, or, um, like a f- image format, there's JPEG and PNG, or you could create a PDF. But long ago, there were 100 different formats on all these things. We've all, as a market, just sort of solidified on one or two, and now, like USB-C charging is now like kinda the standard format for

Ian Andersen: Yep.

Brandon Giella: So we all kinda onto one standard. So you're saying the standard now get a loyalty program, hotel booking program, those kind of things into at least one of these AI platforms, there's a protocol that Google has called Universal Commerce Protocol,

Ian Andersen: Mm-hmm.

Brandon Giella: and then there's a Talon.one that's like a more specific version of that. But these protocols are kinda getting worked out now, and you can build toward them, and that will help your loyalty program to be readable to the AI. Is that--

Ian Andersen: yeah.

Brandon Giella: Is that right?

Ian Andersen: No, that's exactly right. Um, there are far more protocols than the couple I mentioned, but those are, those are definitely industry leaders. and they're-- it's a little, uh… Actually, I think a long time ago, you brought up this analogy that I think of often about how, and I don't even remember what the conversation was, but how, you know, because the Romans built their roads in such a fashion, the space shuttle now has to be designed a certain way. and it had to do with, you know, the Romans built the roads, and that just sort of became the standard for how other European countries and eventually United States built our roads. And then because of that, you know, the, the, because the space shuttle has to be transported along the road system, by the, by however method the Romans used to determine their road size now determines the design of the space shuttle. And I always, I've, I think of that analogy at random times, because we, you know, we have to live in the world provided to us. And, the current state of things is Google is, is king of the internet, right? Like, I think AI over the last couple years has, has taken some of that away from Google as far as being, kind of the search platform of choice. But, but we still live in a reality where the vast majority of internet standards over the past two decades have been determined by what's best for Google, right? and you and I work in marketing. SEO is a, a very common term that actually predates Google or definitely predates when Google was the platform. and it is, I mean, just language agnostic, right? It's search engine optimization. But now it only means how to optimize for Google, right? Like, nobody really considers what other search engines, and there are plenty of other search engines out there. It's almost not a non-factor of, of any other optimization other than what Google says is best for, for their, for ranking on their algorithms. So-

Brandon Giella: 98-- 95 or 98% of search

Ian Andersen: Yeah

Brandon Giella: You have like 1% on Bing and 1% on DuckDuckGo and whatever, but

Ian Andersen: Yeah.

Brandon Giella: doesn't even matter. Who

Ian Andersen: And whatever the, what's the big Chinese one? I forget. There's always this weird random statistic you see on searches. But the, the point is like, for now, these companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google itself, you know, xAI, all, all the various big, companies developing large language models that virtually all other AI, AI platforms use, they have to live in the same world we live in, right? They have to kind of figure out how to optimize the AI to-- It's not just about the world optimizing for AI. They have to optimize the AI for the world as well. So by doing that, just by the sheer nature of the internet at the moment, a lot of this is gonna be very Google-focused. there will be some adjustment as that goes, and I think, it's going to take more and more off of Google being the dominant factor. But they still have to use the roads that were built by the Romans, right? Like, they still have to use the-- they still have to use HTML and HTTPS. And that's not to say that's gonna be it forever, but for right now, and because of the inertia that that provides, structurally it'll look very similar, even if five, 10, 15 years down the road it is a new, you know, a new protocol, a new, you know, markup language, whatever. even if it is something brand new and not Google's UCP or HTML or whatever, it'll probably look relatively similar as far as the nuts and bolts go, just 'cause

Brandon Giella: Yeah

Ian Andersen: that's where you're starting from, you know? And so the point with, with loyalty program managers is, if these are the generally accepted user protocols at the moment, if we build to it, even if it changes to something else, you've done ninety, ninety-five percent of the legwork, right? So the switching costs will be much cheaper than, than you might think. It's not, oh, we're gonna invest heavily in, in Betamax and then VHS throws out all our effort, right? It's, it's we're gonna invest heavily in, you know… I don't know. I'm struggling to think of a good analogy. But like option A and option B turns out to be the winner, but they're ninety-five percent the same, so it-- you don't lose any of that, that effort.

Brandon Giella: Yeah, I think what's useful about a lot of these technologies is they do build on each other. You know,

Ian Andersen: Yes

Brandon Giella: MCPs are only useful because APIs are useful, you know,

Ian Andersen: Exactly

Brandon Giella: you know, that, that kind of idea. It's

Ian Andersen: Yeah

Brandon Giella: uh, the economic principle in, uh, of lock-in. You're not locked in by making this, this sunk cost, you know?

Ian Andersen: Exactly. And that's, uh, I'm glad you brought up APIs because l- that's another example of, of there are other ways to transfer information from one server to another, from one website to another, whatever. But over time, uh, the API framework of, of, you know, standard curl requests or, or, you know, the way that, that you can do it in, in Python or, or, Java have sort of organically centered around, APIs as the primary method for transferring, objects from, you know, one software platform to another. so if program managers can, can take those basics and make it, API-ready, you know, your, your balances, your, your rewards balances, the, the earn rates, redemption values, you know, tiers, y- all of the stuff that, that is sort of fundamental to loyalty programs across the board, if you can structure that data in a API-ready format, your, your battle's nearly over at that point, right? Then it doesn't really matter which AI wins, which, you know, commerce protocol wins, whatever. You have your data ready to plug into whatever system. and so that's what, that's what I mean by program managers having to think through the, the, the paradigm of how their platform is structured. it can no longer be… I mean, and it's been this way for a while, even before the AI conversation, but, but AI is, like, really driving the lesson home. It can no longer be totally native, totally internal, totally proprietary in, how things are structured just because if your data isn't easily accessible by somebody not typing in your website, you know, and going directly to your platform, then, you know, in a couple years it might as well not be there. And, and we have examples of this from before AI in, airlines and hotels when, when booking platforms such as Switchfly, but, you know, Priceline, Hopper, you know, whatever, all the various booking platforms out there. When the, when those started to, take off and do, um, you know, and, and consolidate, travel itineraries for people, there were, there were organizations that resisted allowing Their data to be, be used by, by those companies, right? by, by booking platforms. And whether it was airlines or hotels or what, there were, companies that did not allow their specific product to be shown, and they took a hit big time for not doing so, right? Like it became readily apparent that if you're not participating, if you're not able to make it third-party readable, you're gonna lose out. And, and I believe AI is no different. You know, if your data is not AI readable, you know, back to the SEO conversation, there's now something called AEO, right? Answer engine optimization. If you're not structuring your content to be readable, easily readable and understandable by AI, it's not gonna bubble up to the surface. So, it's no different for the actual product you sell or the, the rewards and loyalty, program. If that information is not readable by third parties, it's gonna go by the wayside pretty quickly

Brandon Giella: Part of the point of having a, an incredible travel podcast is that you have content readable by AI

Ian Andersen: Yeah.

Brandon Giella: Anyway, uh,

Ian Andersen: Yeah, exactly

Brandon Giella: what, what you're talking about, what comes to mind, this might sound really esoteric. Go with me for a second

Ian Andersen: I, I'm all about esoteric

Brandon Giella: What I know it, same. Uh, w-what you're talking about, and I can empathize with people, uh, not wanting to get on the new paradigm. and what I mean by that is back in the day, this is before I was born, but what I understood is you used to call somebody to set up your travel itinerary. They were called a travel advisor an agent, and you would talk to them, and they would book things for you. And really good ones had all this incredible insider knowledge. They had all this context about places that they have themselves been or booked trips through. They knew these little hole-in-the-wall restaurants or hotels that you gotta go see. If you go down this little path, you get this incredible view, but not many people know about it. I'm gonna make sure that you have time for that in your itinerary, etc., etc. And then digital platforms came online, '80s, '90s, 2000s, and those travel agents then started using digital platforms to do a lot of this. But there was context that was lost because you had to fit a protocol. You had to get all of that knowledge into a technical language that could understand it and then present that information and make decisions about it, booking things, prices, dates, whatever. And then, uh, then there are self-serve digital booking platforms. So now I, as an individual traveler, can go to a Google, a Switchfly or whatever and start booking things myself with the options that are available. But I have nowhere near the context that a travel agent would. And so there's

Ian Andersen: Sure.

Brandon Giella: loss as you're increasingly more digital. And what I'm hearing is same kind of thing may be happening, where an AI agent, in order for it to understand the options or inventory available or the payment methods available or the scheduling or whatever, context loss that a, a booking platform like Switchfly, i-i-- that context gets lost, so it, it, it has fewer options to book for you because it has to be agent readable. And so as you're going down the technology chain, you're losing context, and I can imagine would be people like a, like a Socrates not wanting to write anything down because the, the power of his word or the depth of his word is, is lost when you write it down, which is true.

Ian Andersen: Right

Brandon Giella: I, I don't wanna give my data over in that way because I want all of those options available. It's very important that I ha-- retain all that context on my platform because it's built a certain way Is what I'm saying, is that, is that tracking with how you're seeing things? That because of this protocol, it's limiting the-- there's context loss from travel agent to digital platform to agent to platform what's available or what could be booked or, you know, and there's some hesitation maybe there with this new paradigm

Ian Andersen: Yeah. I, I mean, you're not wrong in that any time data is transport- transferred between any medium, some of the context is gonna be lost. When our grandparents used to call their local travel agent to, book, you know, gr- they have a vacation they wanna book or whatever, they have to provide that context, whatever context around the criteria of their, their travel plans to that agent, right? They have to say, "Hey, we have this window available in the summer that we'd like to go on a vacation. we, you know, here's about where our budget range is. We're more beach people than we are mountain people." You know, they have to give that con- that context to the agent, who then adds their, their knowledge and expertise around, you know, what you're saying, of being able to then connect those dots. If, you know, our grandparents didn't tell the agent the timeframe, they might come back with something completely non-feasible, right? Because that, that context wasn't there at the beginning. and I think it's the same at any point. A, a good travel agent would go back to pull the context from the people go- calling them, the, from our grandparents, right? They would say, if they weren't given it upfront, they would go back to them and say, "Hey, when are you thinking about traveling? What are the kinds of activities you like to do?" The-- Right? They would pull that, and that's where that knowledge base that the travel agent had is very important, 'cause not only do they know where to go for the information, but what information is pertinent, right? And what could potentially become stumbling blocks. And I think we're at that point in, We can plug in information to, uh, AI agent to, to go book travel, and it still is gonna require some of that context as far as, you know, dates of travel, s- where you're going, b- you know, whatever. but it may or may not have that built up knowledge to pool, what else might be needed, right?

Brandon Giella: Hmm.

Ian Andersen: and I think where we get around that or where that's going, whether or not you want to get around it or not, is as this stuff grows and learns, it will be able-- it will accumulate that knowledge base that, say, the travel agent had of knowing where to fill in those details of context. for example, I think, right now, as of right now, and I think everybody sort of understands this intuitively but may have not thought it through, if you, tell an AI agent to go book travel for this date range going to Tokyo, you know, here's my budget, go, It's gonna optimize for price, basically. Uh, with, without any other external, constraints around where and when it should be looking and whatnot, it will optimize for price, just because price is the kind of fundamental that we all have to deal with, right? So, like, it's just a very good, like, all else equal, we're going for the cheapest option.

Brandon Giella: It's quantitative, meaning a

Ian Andersen: Yes.

Brandon Giella: that out, whereas it

Ian Andersen: Exactly.

Brandon Giella: you know, for

Ian Andersen: E-exactly. And the value judgment piece that's gonna be brought in, that, say, individual company might have, by the nature of their business, that, that sort of knowledge base that they've built up that, that you're referring to, they might be able to make certain value judgments on behalf of the customer that an AI wouldn't necessarily be able to right now. So some of that's gonna be lost. I mean, that is just the, the nature of the world, right? When, when you switch communication mediums, some of that will be lost. However This is clearly the way the industry is moving, and if you're not taking part in it, it doesn't really matter how much knowledge and context you have built up if people aren't finding your product. And this is the way people are gonna be finding and booking products. So that's the, the downside of it a little bit is some of that will be lost. It's just, it's gonna happen. However, if you build your program in such a manner to convey as much of that as possible to an AI agent, there will be possibility of that getting, getting transferred through, right? If, if, uh, you're structuring your loyalty program correctly, if you're structuring the linking posture of your products, if you're, conveying in a quantitative way the value of your product, now the AI agent has something else to, to take in and, and will be able to better evaluate considering those extra value judgments. Um, the best example I can think of, and I'm not sure if this is totally, a perfect analogy, but like say you're a eco… you run eco tours or whatever, that might be slightly more expensive than a separate tour that covers the same area but are not like eco-focused kind of, kind of thing. Well, your competitive edge, your, your value prop that you've been selling on for so many years is we are eco-focused. You know, not only do we do tours of the environment, but, you know, our-- we have electronic vehicles and, you know, and everything else around it is we are eco-friendly. if the difference on paper is only the price, you're obviously losing out, right? So how do you convey that message to a, a computer that is built to read quantitative, options? It-- you have to find ways to, to structure that in a quantitative way. So it might be, and, and I'm talking a little bit out of my depth on the engineering side, right? Like this is for very smart engineers to figure out, not nerdy marketers. But, if you can, if you can create a, a quantitative value for what that difference is, what that eco tour difference is and, and offset it, offset that from the price, right? You now have kind of one-for-one value that an AI agent can take into account. is that, is that perfect? No. Uh, is it gonna be tough to do? I mean, you said before our CEO all the time brings up, you know, if, if everybody could do it, everybody would do it, right? This is complex stuff, that is gonna take some real product leadership and real engineering development, as well as, you know, from the user side trying to figure out the, the user side of this. and the user side is really interesting because you are now optimizing for two users, right? An AI agent and the end customer. so it is, it is, it's not necessarily easy stuff, but if the loyalty program is to s- be successful, it, it needs to happen. It needs to be done, right? We are moving towards a more AI-involved world in every aspect of our lives, and, and booking travel is by no means exempt. and even if, even if the, the agent is not authorized to book to make the final booking decision, the options they present the user are still gonna be relevant, right? And if, if you're not even an option, then that, that user can't even make the, the decision of who to book through or with. So,

Brandon Giella: I suppose the

Ian Andersen: it's tough

Brandon Giella: it is there's the supply side, which is what you've been talking about a lot. You know, if you're

Ian Andersen: Yeah

Brandon Giella: a, a, you know, a, a program that's supplying experiences, hotels, and so on, you've gotta supply that inventory in a way that AI can read it. And then there's the demand side of a user saying, you know, "I, I want to book these things." And it's trying to make both of those readable, but then also, factor in judgment, whatever the context might be. You know, it could be dates, prices, values, etc. But presumably, I g-- maybe to, maybe to, to counterpoint what I was saying, but to kind of take your, your thread one step further, is if I'm talking to Claude for two years, it's got tons of context on me. Same thing with Siri AI. So I just downloaded, uh, or upgraded to the iOS twenty-seven that came out this week, Siri AI is supposed to be wonderful and can do all kinds of things for you now. Siri obviously has tons of context on me, years of photos and messages, and who knows? And it's supposed to be all private and so on. But if I say, "Hey, Siri, book me a hotel that does this…" No, please don't. Ah, I shouldn't have said that out loud. Um, you know, "Book me a hotel, uh, in for this, this, and this date," it knows I have two kids and a wife, so I

Ian Andersen: Right

Brandon Giella: a large room that can fit a crib, and, you know, it knows that I need car seats and my transportation and, and so on because it knows all this context about me. But then how does the supply side know all of that context to surface in the program that Siri can then read, and then the booking agent in between those two th-- You know, I-- It's a lot to

Ian Andersen: Yeah.

Brandon Giella: but,

Ian Andersen: It's a lot. I think there are buckets though that you can do that in, right? Of like family or not family, you know, like higher end travel versus eco-friendly travel. You know, there are ways to bucket that information that it doesn't have to be precise to you,

Brandon Giella: Yeah

Ian Andersen: But it, it can fit your broad demographic

Brandon Giella: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, I feel like I've learned something today.

Ian Andersen: Okay.

Brandon Giella: what, what do you, uh, what's your, what's your closing takeaway? What, what should people be left with after this discussion? 'Cause I feel like there's so much there that we could go on a million rabbit holes, and I could talk to you for hours

Ian Andersen: Yeah.

Brandon Giella: and context and so on.

Ian Andersen: Yeah

Brandon Giella: what, uh, you know, loyalty program leader or product manager listening to this, what do you say to them? What encouragement or sympathy

Ian Andersen: I say that if, if you're not thinking about this now, you need to get on it, right? Whatever,

Brandon Giella: Mm-hmm

Ian Andersen: steps you decide to go down, however you plan to deal with, AI commerce, you have to have a plan,

Brandon Giella: Yeah,

Ian Andersen: Even if your plan's to ignore it, that is still a plan, right?

Brandon Giella: right

Ian Andersen: and, and if you're not thinking how to structure, not just the messaging, not just the offerings, the rewards, you know, everything on that side of things on the r- program, but actually how the engineering nuts and bolts of the loyalty platform is, is set up, you need to start thinking about it and, and making sure that assuming you want to be AI readable, making sure, uh, your, your platform is engineered in such a way to be, to be AI readable. So, that's the only takeaway really is if you are not thinking about this now, it's time to start

Brandon Giella: us, as the title of this episode suggests, your loyalty program is invisible to AI.

Ian Andersen: Yeah

Brandon Giella: you need to be visible. Let's figure out a way to do

Ian Andersen: Absolutely

Brandon Giella: Well, Ian, thank you so much. Uh, uh,

Ian Andersen: Thank you

Brandon Giella: like I really learned something today. This is great. Um, I didn't even know that Google could, uh, could book you things, so you've enlightened me. This is really great.

Ian Andersen: Yeah

Brandon Giella: I hope this has been enlightening to our listeners, and we will see you next time

Ian Andersen: Awesome. Thanks, Brandon