New Report: 3 Travel Loyalty Strategies for 2025

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

The landscape for travel loyalty continues to grow, fragment, and change at a rapid pace. Hotel and airline programs are expanding year on year, reaching record figures. For example, Marriott Bonvoy now boasts more than 200 million members and has seen membership grow by 60 percent in the last five years. Hilton is hot on its heels, with its membership increasing 110 percent over the same period. In aviation, the value of some airline loyalty programs now exceeds $24 billion.

Under the surface, the consumer experience is changing. While loyalty program membership grows in a macro sense, members are looking for more discounts and personalization at the micro level, seeking opportunities that suit them best for any particular trip. Travelers are increasingly less loyal to one program and often shop around.

“There is an interesting opportunity for brands to find ways to make sure that their loyalty program really increases loyalty, rather than just becoming another element of comparison,” said Damien Pfirsch, chief commercial officer of Agoda and head of Rocket Travel by Agoda. “The challenge is how you tailor your global loyalty program to deliver personalized value propositions that resonate at an individual level.” 

Rocket Travel by Agoda partners with more than 300 brands worldwide, including leading airlines, global telecommunications corporations, financial institutions, and more, to develop product-driven partnerships to create long-term value for both parties. Its new trend report, Dive Into 2025: The Year of Personalization and Flexibility,” explores how to balance macro-market growth with micro-customer targeting, highlighting several key areas of focus for travel companies looking to further strengthen their loyalty programs in 2025.

SkiftX spoke with Pfirsch to explore three important touchstones of a modernized loyalty program: personalization, localization, and AI and machine learning.

Reimagining Personalization

Travelers have always wanted trips that cater to their individual tastes, but technological changes and behavioral shifts have directly influenced expectations for more personalized service from their loyalty programs. 

Gone are the days of “earn and burn” when it comes to loyalty — where getting and spending points were all that mattered to travelers. Loyalty members now want a more personalized experience, not only from their travel, but also from how they search, book, and pay or redeem points on that travel. 

For example, travelers look for inspiration and recommendations in many different places, such as social media, but most channels don’t have a clear way to deliver a travel experience. Given the amount of personal preferences, details, and data shared within loyalty program ecosystems, brands should be on the front lines to deliver a better, more personalized customer journey. 

“A loyalty program can become a driver of inspiration by helping people find out about trends, giving access to certain experiences, and offering the right deals at the right time,” said Pfirsch. “Be closer to what the customer wants to do. It’s not just about offering a great hotel in the Bahamas but delivering something that’s really close to them that they may not have access to without the support of your brand.”

Grow Global by Going Local

Rocket Travel by Agoda’s 2025 Trend Report indicates that tapping into growing markets — such as India, Japan, or China — will be crucial for businesses aiming to stay ahead in the competitive landscape of global travel. Given that each of these markets has unique customer dynamics, learning how to localize marketing and experiences will be crucial for brands to reach massive customer cohorts in new ways. 

“For travel companies to scale and deliver worldwide loyalty programs, they have to do what OTAs are doing: adapt their offering, communication, and engagement with customers depending on the market they are operating in,” said Pfirsch.

According to Pfirsch, language is a top priority, and loyalty programs need to communicate multilingually. But that’s not all. To truly drive loyalty, companies need to understand the cultural habits, payment preferences, search behaviors, and desired experiences of their international customers and deliver an experience targeted to them.

Get Comfortable with AI and Machine Learning

Strategic use of AI and machine learning in ways that produce immediate, incremental improvements will be pivotal in driving customer loyalty and business success in 2025 and beyond. 

“AI can identify trends in the market, see what people are talking about, and quickly build content that will help people make those travel decisions,” explained Pfirsch.

Rocket Travel by Agoda already uses AI to help surface relevant review snippets to target the right customer, noting that some review attributes are more important to some customers than others. AI can also be used to increase efficiency, promoting self-service on a loyalty platform.  

“AI can improve the way you talk to customers, improve the way you understand how customers are talking to you, and help channel customers into self-servicing areas of your loyalty platform by identifying the needs and therefore offering them questions and options that they can activate with a few clicks,” Pfirsch added. “If they can do it by themselves, they will be eager to self-serve and click through an experience rather than wait for an agent to come back to them.”

Get Set for Success in 2025

As travel companies prepare for the challenges and opportunities of 2025, Pfirsch urged leaders to consider the change needed within their own businesses to fully maximize their loyalty program.

“The biggest challenge is to develop two things. First is the culture of experimentation and innovation. How do you become more agile? A lot of this is culture change,” he said. “And second is the investment in the platform and tech behind the scenes. Then you can progressively make those changes and see what works and what doesn’t.”  

“However, just bringing in a partner to do it for you, if you’re not eager to create that cultural change in the organization, will certainly not deliver the best possible results,” Pfirsch concluded.

For deeper insights on these topics, download the new trend report, “Dive Into 2025: The Year of Personalization and Flexibility.”

This content was created collaboratively by Rocket Travel by Agoda and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.