Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m your host Paula Thomas, and if you work in loyalty marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world.
Hello and welcome to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV. Today I’m delighted to be able to bring some unique insights, hot off the presses they say, from last week’s release of the 2024 Travel Benefits and Customer Engagement Research Report for Asia Pacific, commissioned by our friends in Collinson. This research was conducted with more than 7,250 people across 14 Asia Pacific markets and was designed to help particularly financial services brands understand the power of travel as they build their value propositions for customers.
Joining me to share these insights is Rohan Bhalla, Vice President of Business Solutions for Collinson Asia Pacific, who shares the key points, not just on how travel resonates as a category, but also some fascinating details around which countries, nationalities and demographics spend the most on the travel category compared to other areas of their household budgets. Rohan also shares new insights around the incredible growth and projections for both sports tourism and music tourism. As areas for all brands to think about as you’re designing your future exciting propositions. All with the power to drive customer loyalty.
I hope you enjoy my conversation with Rohan Bhalla from Collinson’s Asia Pacific team.
So, Rohan Bhalla, welcome back to Let’s Talk Loyalty and now welcome to Loyalty TV.
Rohan: Thanks, Paula. It’s great to be here and congratulations on five years. That’s awesome milestone.
Paula: Oh my goodness. You’re so kind, Joe. And you guys have been part of the journey, I think pretty much since day one. So, so you’ve really been an amazing support. And yeah, I think we’re still recovering from like the shock. I mean, five years it’s kind of hard to believe. I don’t know where it’s gone. But certainly from our perspective, we’re going from strength to strength and we do love working with you guys. So, Collinson does amazing work in the loyalty space. So we’re here to learn from your expertise. I think you finally stopped jet setting as well, Rohan. You were obviously together we were in Brisbane and you did some amazing presentations down there. And now of course you’ve been in Taiwan and now back to Singapore, huh?
Rohan: Correct. Yeah travel is is happening. I mean, we’re all jet setting. You’re on the road pretty much all the time yourself. But yeah, Brisbane was really awesome. It was great to hear you speaking and first time we met. So that was really nice.
Paula: Indeed. Indeed, absolutely. So yeah, they say loyalty, honestly, is such a loyal community to each other. So I think we’ve proven that with all of the wonderful events. So I think today is a really big topic actually, Rohan. And in many ways, I feel like we’re preaching to the converted because given how much we do travel, I think we instill How much we love to do it whether it’s personal or professional, but I think as marketers, obviously the fundamental starting point before we get into designing any loyalty propositions is to make sure that what we think our customers want is actually what they do want. So travel is always the key topic for that. So amazing research we’re going to get into talking about today that you guys have just published.
But before we get into talking about your research report, Rohan, as you know, we have a very important opening question that we really want to pick your brains and see what you admire in the industry or again from a personal perspective. So kick us off and please do tell our audience, Rohan, what is your favorite loyalty program at the moment?
Rohan: Oh, thanks. So I looked around actually for this one. I’m personally not a member of too many loyalty programs. There are a few that I have on my phone none in my wallet, but I did look around to see what was happening in the industry, what was unique, what is fresh, what is exciting.
And there is one app that I’ve been using for a while and they’ve recently launched their loyalty program. It’s crypto.com. I, I don’t know if you trade in cryptocurrencies, Paula, or I’ve seen that side of the world, but it’s pretty exciting. I got into it relatively recently and crypto.com have launched a loyalty program called Rewards Plus. Now this is very, it’s different in the form that it is very fresh looking. It is very contemporary targeted at a very gamified approach. So the audience is younger people who are more online who are obviously trading. So they’re familiar with, you know, that world.
And the entire look and feel of the program is very fresh. So it’s all about, you know, almost like moon landings. So you’re, you know, there’s a level in the program that’s called a Moon Colony and it’s got it’s got 20 plus levels in it. So, I mean, if you think about program tiering, you’d be like, whoa, that doesn’t make sense. But then you think about the kind of audience they’re attracting and the kind of gamification that they used to 20 levels is exciting. There are benefits that you get with each level. The benefits are a mix of what is transactional. And the rational ones, but there’s also some emotional benefits of, you know, getting extra value on the crypto that you’re trading or being able to stake cryptos on certain you know, channels and so on.
So it is really interesting in the way they’ve come up with this concept. Given that it’s a new program, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for it to grow. And they can really expand into multiple areas. I think partnerships will be a key one, which, you know, the financial services industry is very used to. So for a FinTech, I think it’s a really it’s a space to start. And I think they’ll see a lot of traction with, you know, expanding that program, bringing on more partners, growing in terms of the community. And it’ll be interesting to see the journey of this program as it evolves.
Paula: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s a very good point, Rohan, actually, and very relevant to the conversation today, actually, because I think what I’m hearing, certainly in terms of financial services, is that they are really at risk of disruption. There are so many fintechs that are out there looking to kind of have a share of that market that at the end of the day, they absolutely have to find ways to differentiate.
So clearly crypto.com has identified the gamified approach and I’m definitely going to check that out even though 100 percent I am absolutely not a trader, Rohan. So I’ll purely be looking at the program. But I like that. It’s quite interesting, as you said, just to even observe that they’ve built in kind of 20 tiers. I’m guessing most of them are purely game tiers in terms of, you know, feeling that’s a game sense of accomplishment not necessarily maybe being rewarded in a tangible way at each level.
But anyway, as I said, first of all, it’s always great to have a new answer cause we do get a lot of people talking about the old favorites so thank you for that. And someday we must have a cup of coffee and you must tell me how it goes crypto world cause I really don’t understand it. So it’s a super exciting one to kick us off.
Rohan: Thank you. Yeah, it is. It is an exciting, brave new world. So definitely not for the faint hearted to be participating in the crypto side. I’m learning myself. So hopefully by the time we have that cup of coffee, I would be in a little better position to talk more about it.
Paula: Amazing. Well, we’re all on a learning journey, Rohan, here. So listen, let’s get into our main topic for today. As I said, Collinson obviously has just produced a fantastic report, really focused on the power of leisure or pardon me, the power of travel to drive differentiation for brands when they design their value propositions.
So there’s an awful lot of background to all of this, but I guess as a starting point to me, it was almost it’s almost so appealing again to me on a personal level that the whole travel piece that I thought, do we even need research to prove this? But the really important principle, of course, as marketers is to design for our customers, not for ourselves.
So even though I’m already convinced I thought the first question to you should be, why do you feel that you needed to produce this piece of research? Because actually it’s a huge amount of work.
Rohan: It is. And we’ve been doing consumer studies almost every year at Collinson and we’re looking at what are the trends in loyalty, what are consumers saying, what kind of, you know, rewards, benefits, channels, resonate with them.
And over the years as we’ve been doing this, the one thing that we’ve seen or the shift that we’ve been seeing most happening is moving from more rational to more emotional, moving from more tangible to more experiential. And as we see that what we find that comes out on top is travel, and travel keeps coming back up as one of the key things that consumers are looking at.
So when we looked at this year’s study and we were setting it up, we said, let’s understand. What are the motivations and behaviors that travel actually influences for consumers? So in setting up the study, we looked at some of the key criteria for qualification was one is that you’ve had must have taken at least two return trips in the year. It’s not a lot. But that was a precondition that anyone on the survey has taken at least two. And they have at least one fee paying credit card. And with that, we wanted to understand what are their behaviors in terms of spend, in terms of rewards, in terms of usage, in terms of acquisition, and so on.
And that was kind of the premise of this study. So it was really focused on travel audiences, And how does that travel influence their consumer behavior? So that was the premise of the study. We ran the study around April of this year. And we’ll be putting out the report for the study in the next couple of weeks.
What we find what we did was we interviewed seven and a half thousand respondents across 14 markets in APAC. So we looked at you know, what was those behaviors and what was the part and influence that travel was having on them? And some of the insights were really interesting and exciting. And it comes out unanimously in terms of how travel influences audiences.
Paula: Amazing. Yeah. And I mean, you’ve said something there, Rohan, that has been said a lot on the show, but I think it does bear repeating. And it’s this idea of the move from the transactional to the emotional side.
And I remember saying to you actually, when we were having a call to plan this conversation, when I started in loyalty, which was back kind of in 2010, it was only the rational benefits. Like when we said to people like we’re building our rewards proposition and we did our research, all they wanted was points in cash back.
Whereas what’s coming through very clearly and what I love to see coming in your research is that actually people are now saying, actually there’s something more important than that. I do want my travel benefits and that is driving my decision making. So I mean, given that I was surprised to hear it actually coming through, I wanted to ask, like, were you also surprised that it really now is coming through, I suppose, so robustly in the research?
Rohan: Definitely. I think it is. It’s been inching its way up, year on year as we’ve done these studies, and it’s good to see that happening. I think as loyalty practitioners, we talk about soft benefits, on the importance of soft benefits and programs, but it’s taken a while for brands to start accepting that and start including a lot more of those in what they’re doing and and we’re seeing that now, you know, coming more strongly from the consumer side as well, that they’re more appreciative of this.
It’s not to say that the rational benefits go away completely. I think the real opportunity is when you can blend the two well and have a strong mix across the two when you see the maximum impact come from come back to the program. So it’s definitely something we’re seeing coming through year on year across the surveys.
Paula: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s a good point. Yeah. We can’t have one without the other. And the piece that I did like, I suppose, is that you kind of got into, I suppose, some of the kind of the human needs, I suppose, almost like the psychological side of what travel is actually doing.
And again, like, I always wish I’d maybe studied psychology a little bit, but just to help our audience understand, because again, not everybody listening will be in financial services. Not everybody listening will have any, maybe travel benefits at all in their loyalty proposition. They might be in different sectors, for example. But will you give us a sense of some of the the very human needs that travel seems to satisfy as distinct from maybe other loyalty benefits?
Rohan: Yeah, So, when we started doing this research, we also looked at what is it that travel does for us and why is it so important. And, while we did our own research online about you know, the impact that travel has on us as humans, we came across some really interesting studies.
Now, the first one was a book by an author called Ash Bhardwaj. He’s an author and a travel journalist. And he wrote a book called Why We Travel. And in that book, he identified 12 motivations that people have for travel. And essentially all of what he says and all of those 12 motivations sit at the upper end of, you know, our hierarchy of needs.
So, if you think about, you know, our standard Maslow Pyramid, after the survival essentials are met, it’s really travel. And what Ash Parthawat says in his book is that for a lot of us, travel is one of life’s greatest ambitions. And it sits right up there, you know, after having a family, you know, having a house, it’s really about travel.
And there have been additional scientific studies that have been done which talk about how moving away is an essential habit of effective thinking. So creating distance and difference from where you are today gives us a fresh perspective on the same problems of today or the same questions of today.
So home remains the same. Home is where it is. But if you step away and then come back, you’re able to more effectively think about that. And that’s part of just human behavior. So and there have been multiple studies that have been done along this line that show how stepping away, moving outside, traveling and then coming back brings a fresh perspective to our things and it allows us to tackle our challenges, our problems or even everyday opportunities in a different light. Now that was really interesting and that’s almost self actualizing in what travel can do.
And then the third thing was that it’s actually grounded in our DNA. So there’s a specific strain in our DNA, which is, which predisposes us towards adventure seeking, towards traveling, towards doing more out there. And again, through studies that have been done, it shows that as our ancestors moved out of the horn of Africa and, you know, traveled across the planet the people that have more of this gene are the ones whose ancestors traveled further away at the time of, you know, the Great Migration.
So it’s almost like, you know, it’s rooted in our very being, the need to travel and the power of what travel does for us. And And we felt that was really interesting to see travel in that light of how it is creating almost a self actualization for us as we go on our travels. And then putting that into the loyalty context was then how does this influence our behavior. So if you’re rewarded with travel, or if we think travel is so important, what is it doing in our choice of brands, in our usage of those brands and so on?
So that’s kind of where we started on this journey and what we found with travel, which I personally thought was really exciting.
Paula: It really is actually, Rohan, and I don’t know about you, but it came through in a couple of presentations, obviously, particularly yours, but back down to you know, the conference in Australia, this whole idea of remembering, you know, all of our customers as human beings with all of those very specific needs and wants.
As you said, there is a hierarchy as we get, you know, you know, more blessed with the basics in life. And I think particularly, you know, that the world is a kind of a crazy place sometimes. So to bring us back to those simple basics, I didn’t know it was literally in, in our DNA, but as I said, I feel that coming through. So it’s a lovely human way, I guess, to start the research rather than just having a lot of statistics is to really keep it with a very human focus. So
Rohan: Absolutely. I mean, I mean, it’s easy to say, oh, you know, include travel rewards motivate. And here’s a whole bunch of stats that prove that.
Paula: Yeah.
Rohan: But I think all of us at an individual level understand and appreciate what travel does for us. And it’s not to say that we all have to travel 50 times a year or, you know, anything like that. I think it’s, there is an element of sustainability. There’s all the conscience about travel that comes with it, which we’re all, you know, very aware of, but the bar that it has on our being is important and travel is not always about traveling by air could be just, you know, taking a bike ride and, you know, riding 100 kilometers if you can achieve that, right? That itself is the kind of impact that it has. And I think all of that together is important to look at it holistically.
Paula: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cause even when you were saying about the problem solving piece, Rohan, I was thinking like, I really do need to probably leave my desk more often, even just go out for a walk and do that change of perspective that you alluded to. Cause I think as busy people, we can forget.
And I think it absolutely adds to your point. We’re not just talking air travel. We’re talking rail travel. We’re talking walking, biking and everything. So that beautiful starting point I think is you know, the shared passion. And I know we’re going to talk about some of even more passionate topics as well, which are driving people to travel. But I love that point about problem solving because I think it does kind of remind us all why we do what we do.
Rohan: Absolutely. Self actualization will be a very long walk.
Paula: Yes.
Rohan: But I think problem solving is
Paula: important. We’ve got to try. We’ve got to try. And I know we’ve said it’s not about the statistics, Rohan, but I did have one favorite one in your research report, and that was, I suppose, again, how much people are willing to compromise in order to still be able to travel. So I think what you got your your respondents are saying is that first of all, travel, you know, is equivalent for many people only to all of their other household spending combined.
And if it comes to it, they may pull back on things like dining, on going to the gym or other areas of spend tomake sure they still get that travel experience. So that kind of surprised me again, just how powerful it was coming through. And I guess, yeah, just I suppose in general, like, was there anything that really came through to you as, oh my goodness, I wasn’t expecting that either in terms of, you know, maybe the different people who were responding, because I know there’s a lot of different countries represented. But yeah, I’d love to see what intrigued you when you saw the results coming in.
Rohan: I think you, you spotted it. I think the key one was the amount people claim that they spend on travel. Now we expected it to be high. What we didn’t expect is that it would be one of the highest across all spend categories.
Now, as per the report, almost a third of the audience. Sorry, almost a third of the expenditure that people do is on travel. The other third is on groceries and retail. So it’s right up there with everyday needs in terms of spend. And I think that was something which we were not expecting to see in the study. So, so the amount that people believe that they spend on travel is really high.
In terms of markets, Singapore and Hong Kong have the highest spend on travel as compared to the other markets. And Singapore is almost double of what it is for APAC. And that was again, really interesting. Now that the reasons for that, because probably most of the travel from Singapore is international. So there isn’t really a domestic travel market per se overseas. So, that comes out really strongly from Singapore’s lens.
The other piece is in terms of generations. Now, the millennials are the ones that spend the most on travel across all the generations, but Gen Zs are very close to Gen X and boomers. So the millennials over index, but the Gen Zs and the Gen X are at the same level. Now that was also interesting. We thought that Gen Z’s might be lower in terms of their travel spend, just given the amount of disposal income that they may have to put towards travel, but that wasn’t the case. So it did come up strongly and consistently across all generations as well.
And I think for me, that was really that was a really surprising and interesting fact. Now, if we go back to what you mentioned about, people willing to forego other areas of expense, but not cut back on travel. That was something we did during the pandemic. So that was a study we’d done during the pandemic and people were still willing to forego dining, subscription services, gym memberships, but not cut their travel budget at a time when they couldn’t travel.
And we’ve just seen that, you know, explode over the next, last couple of years as you know, travel is opened up. People have started traveling. You know, the ability to spend has gone up. And that’s been a really interesting output from the survey. I’ll be keen to see how it looks next year and to see that momentum still continues and sustains. And people still have the same bullish expectation on their travel spends.
Paula: Absolutely. And I want to get into, in a second, Rohan, with you how people are traveling, you know, in terms of the ever increasing expectations because I know you’ve got a lot of research there and of course you’re talking with your own clients all of the time and I guess witnessing this unfolding firsthand.
But before we get into that side, there was also some fabulous, I know it was a small separate research study, but about the power of why people travel I suppose, with regards to, I suppose, more emerging categories. And I know our audience would also love to hear some of the insights that you have around things like sports tourism, music tourism.
I think the sports one was the one that really, again, just kind of blew my mind having just seen obviously the power of the Olympics and hearing more and more of my friends kind of traveling for whether it’s the world cup or all of these different events. It seems to be coming on the radar of loyalty marketers for the first time, at least from my perspective, as something they should really be thinking about in terms of travel is those other associated passions. So I’d love you just to comment on that because it just seems to be exploding.
Rohan: Yeah, I think, I think all the travel is with strong purpose. Tourism and business, you know, the two big buckets we club everything under, but there are so many sub buckets within that. And there’s almost overlapping buckets within tourism and business as well.
So, you know, if you think of it as Venn diagrams with, you know, leisure travel and business travel is the two big ones. The intersection, of course, is one that we’re all familiar with now, which is, you know, the extension of business to leisure or leisure to business. And that’s become almost commonplace. But outside of that, there is so many more reasons for travel that we’re seeing. And everything from religious travel to medical travel exists.
But the two that we looked into was sports and music. And it’s estimated that sports and music tourism together is going to be about worth about 1.5 trillion US dollars in the next eight years. Now this is going up almost threefold from where it is today. And we’re seeing this happen with the number of, you know, sports and music events that are happening across the world. And people are really traveling to be a part of that.
We have the Formula One coming up in Singapore at the end of this month. And it’s a big event for Singapore. We shut down roads you know, because it’s a street race. The road shut down for the event and people travel from all across the region to be a part of it. We’ve seen the same happen with concerts. You know, Taylor Swift had a series of shows in Singapore and they really raked in not just a lot of benefit and value for the brands, but a lot of tourism money for the country and the economy.
And these kinds of events itself are really strong drivers of value for the countries that are hosting them. And I think we’re going to see more of that momentum kick in over the coming years. So sports and music is definitely a big one. And when we did the survey. We also looked at, you know, how often do people travel and the stats are that almost 70 percent of sports and music fans travel overseas or outside of their home country for a sport or music event. And that’s massive.
And when they travel, they don’t just travel for the event, but they travel a few days before and a few days after. So there’s, you know, more that they bake in with that trip, which just means the average spend on such a trip is much higher. And I think that was really interesting to see the purpose with which people travel on out of the approximately five or six times that people are traveling in a year, which was the average that came out in the survey.
At least, you know, one or two times is what they would travel for this purposeful kind of travel. So which is really interesting to see how people are, you know, thinking about their time, about their travels, about how and where they want to spend money, which also means how and where they will save money.
Paula: Absolutely. Yeah. No, when I think about it as I suppose from the passion point perspective that we talked about, it was always part of our loyalty proposition domestically, if I use that term. So again, back to my days in Ireland designing loyalty propositions within telecoms, you know, the brand always did sponsor the local arena, you know, all the big sports teams of course, but again, it’s this idea that people are spending even more to invest in those passions.
And I realized who did it myself for all, and I had to do it. remembered it when we spoke the last time, but my beloved husband had had a milestone birthday recently, and he had on his vision board, a picture of of the stadium for Liverpool who he has supported since he was like seven years old and he’d never been. So I surprised him and we went to Liverpool and we went to see a match. So even though I am not a sports fan, there you go, there’s my sports tourism contribution. I was like, Oh my God, I’m actually doing this.
Rohan: Fabulous. Congratulations.
Paula: Honestly, it’s all there. It’s all happening. So again, I love to feel validated. So listen, there’s there’s obviously super important points for you guys. And again for anybody listening here to understand, I suppose the how, you know, all of the extra expectations that are coming through across all demographics actually is what you’re, you guys are seeing in the research.
And that comes to, I suppose, the expectations at the airports and even pre airport, actually, I know we did talk about increasing life financial services want to integrate more vertically. So I’d love for you to share that because as you know, I’m traveling tomorrow and my card has an allocation of 10 airport transfers and I’ve already used the full allocation for the year and it really gives me a reason to engage with that card.
And I hadn’t realized it was something that, again, is an industry you were seeing coming through as something that we all need to think about. I thought it was a fairly unique proposition, but yeah, I’d love you just to talk about the expectations. And what our audience can learn from your research as they plan their propositions.
Rohan: Yeah. So, let me unpick a few things there. I think in terms of so the first one is that what came out in the research is 92 percent of cardholders said that they would search for the rewards and benefits on a card before they apply. So they were very well aware of the benefits. They would be searching for them and only apply for the cards that gave them the right benefits that matter to them based on their needs. So, so that was really important.
The other thing that came out is that most cardholders, and this is almost unanimous, they agreed that the availability of travel related rewards and benefits, encourages them to select a credit card and to spend on that card for everyday and travel purposes. So exactly what you mentioned that you have a card with some kind of travel related benefits and that’s motivating you to spend on that card and keep that card in your wallet.
The other thing which came out very strongly was that about, about four out of five consumers said that they would choose a bank that, that has the travel benefits on it. And they were encouraged to stay with the bank that had the travel benefits. So not only was it driving acquisition, but also retention. And that was the power that travel benefits overall had on the consumer behavior themselves. So within that, then the next question was what travel benefits really matter and what resonates with the audience?
And when we went into that, what came up strongly was having benefits within the airport ecosystem are the most important. And those benefits are really around creating status for the travel. So making travel comfortable, making travel maybe even more experiential. So the number one benefit that comes out is having access to airport lounges. So that’s a space where, you know, you can unwind, relax, get a glass of champagne. And it just, you know, sets the mood and tone for the upcoming travel, whether it’s business or leisure. So that was the number one benefit that comes up.
The second benefit that comes up is being able to go through security fast. So fast track through security. So not having to queue up or wait in line to being able to, you know, bypass the crowds and get to the lounge faster, right? So that was the second benefit that really comes up. And this is unanimous across all the generations that when we run the survey.
And the third is interestingly, the airport transfer. So being able to get, you know, pick up and drop from your house to the airport or from the airport to your destination hotel or you know, your arrival area that is the third most important travel benefit that comes up. And all three of these are kind of, you know, in the airport and around the airport ecosystem is what consumers are looking for.
Now, beyond that, there are other benefits, which are like Duty Free offers, dining offers, you know, offers in your destination market and so on, which come up, but vary across generations. But what was consistent with these first three across all generations.
Now, if we look at airline programs, Right. These are the core benefits that you get with status in an airline program. So as you progress in the programs, you know, or if you buy, you know, the front of the cab front of the plane tickets, you get some of these benefits, which is, you know, transfer from your house to the airport, you’d get, you know, the priority check in through the airport, and then you get access to the airport lounge, and then priority boarding and so on.
But these are kind of the status benefits, which really resonate with consumers. So, you know, checkbox for airlines for having done it, checkbox for the banks that have been doing this for some time now, but if you think across other programs that haven’t latched onto this or are in the travel space, but aren’t offering some of these things, it’s food for thought to see if consumers are traveling.
Travel is aspirational. These are the kind of benefits that matter, and these benefits drive acquisition, usage, retention, then how do we bring these on board as part of the journey that we’re trying to look at? And I think that was kind of the core insights from the survey, which talked about how it drives behavior. What kind of behavior is it motivates for consumers?
Paula: Yeah. I love that actually, Rohan. And the reason I suppose it’s so appealing, you know, if I have my kind of loyalty design hat on, is exactly to your point. You know, the clarity is there in terms of the appeal of these benefits, but not everyone can afford to fly at the front of the plane or, you know, ever be able to travel frequently enough even to get the maybe a silver or a gold card.
So for financial services to be able to stop in and, you know, step in and offer that to to a broader range of people who want those ultimate experiences, again, traveling, you know, even twice a year, I think that’s a lovely opportunity for everyone to experience that type of travel.
Rohan: Absolutely. And I think the benefit is a cost. Absolutely. But it gives you value on the other end in terms of usage and retention and acquisition. And I think understanding the interplay between the two is so important to be able to balance out the benefit. A lot of times what we find, which comes up in loyalty programs is the liability side is like, Oh, this redemption is happening.
There’s so much cost. There’s so much usage. You want to minimize that. But we don’t look at it. The other end of it, which is what is the upside that it is bringing?
And I think it’s important to keep that lens because from a consumer perspective, which is what came out in the survey, is that they believe it drives them. It motivates them. It influences their behavior. I think the next level for brands would be to see what is the extent of that influence and how can we then make sure we either point the benefits to those consumers that are most likely to engage and have the maximum potential you know, or create some kind of hurdles that allow me to create goals for my consumers to achieve and then unlock some of those benefits. So it’s really about the design of the program with some of these benefits in mind, which is which is, which I think is really exciting in an open space and open field for all.
Paula: Well, it’s always been, I suppose, one of the core reasons for this podcast, even being in existence, Rohan, was exactly that point. Like, how can we prove the incrementality of the behavior that we’re driving? So, it is, as you said, absolutely beautiful to give all of these wonderful things to our members. And, but of course it has to be tied to a business case. And for any, you know, credit card provider, any financial institution, of course, that’s ultimately, you know, the bottom line, they’re building their business. And what they’re doing is leveraging these, you know, super fun and appealing aspirational benefits. But of course, with a very commercial agenda. So thank you for making that point. I think that’s super important.
Rohan: Thanks, Paula.
Paula: Yeah.
Rohan: I think should I continue on with financial services?
Paula: Yeah. Well, I suppose just as a closing question from my side, Rohan I know when we spoke the last time you mentioned that I think it was Chase Bank in the US had really leveraged travel in a very powerful way over the years, in what is, of course, an incredibly competitive market. So, just as a, I suppose, a story from your side, just to kind of give some sense as to what’s possible when this is done well, would you mind sharing that story with our audience?
Rohan: Yeah, absolutely. I think so traditional banks are facing a lot of headwinds. We spoke about competitive pressures at the beginning. You know, with fintechs coming in and even alternative currencies existing and so on, then there’s regulatory challenges. There’s a lot of interchange regulation that’s coming across the board, a lot of interchange capping, which is really crippling a revenue stream for financial services. And that revenue stream predominantly is what funded a lot of the reward programs.
And then, you know, just overall, in terms of consumers are also shifting. Consumers believe that experience is important. And in as part of our survey, one of the stats that we found was that three out of four consumers say that the experience a brand provides is as important as the products and services.
And over the years, what we’re seeing in the financial services industry is that NPS has been declining for traditional banks and the NPS has primarily been declining because they’re not getting the kind of experience they want and there’s a lots of studies out there that talk about this. So, overall, there are a lot of headwinds for financial services.
Now, in this scenario and knowing what we now know about travel and the power that it has, what we’re seeing banks like JPMorgan Chase, what they’re doing is they’re going into vertical ownership of travel. So they’re taking a category that is very high, very involved purchase behavior. So from planning, to booking to experiencing your trip into reliving a trip, we’re all very invested in that travel. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s leisure or business. We’re looking at, you know, what are the best deals out there? What are the best places to stay? What are the best restaurants to eat at? And, you know, everything else around it that comes with that trip.
So what the brand has done is that It’s taken vertical ownership of that entire journey and said, if we can connect all the different aspects of that journey and make sure that our cards are top of mind as we go through that, as a consumer goes through that journey, that’s what’s going to connect and bring value back.
So over the years, what they’ve done is they’ve invested in a lot of businesses that are around this vertical ownership. So from a loyalty engine to restaurant review companies to concierge services, they’ve built an entire ecosystem around being able to help consumers across the entire plan and book stages of that journey. And then when it comes to experience, they have, you know, their credit cards, which with the benefits that we spoke about, like lounge and transfers and so on. But they’ve also built their own airport lounges so their consumers can experience the Chase brand. While they’re sitting, sipping a champagne at the airport, and this is the same consumer that’s probably used the card to book their travel on chasetravel.com. So it’s an entire connected ecosystem or a connected commerce ecosystem that’s around travel.
Now, what Chase says that they’re expecting 15 billion of revenue from Chase Travel in the next year. And they they say that one in four. Four leisure travel dollars is spent on a chase card in the United States. Now that is a significant amount of value that you’re getting from vertical ownership of one, one very vested interest area for consumers. And we’re seeing a similar story play out across multiple markets. So, closer to us in APAC, CBA which is Commonwealth Bank of Australia have also gone on a similar journey where they’ve started integrating elements off the entire travel proposition from plan and book, to experience and relive into their banking ecosystem, and we’re seeing more and more banks, especially look at this.
So, you know, banks are getting disrupted by the fintechs. The travel world is getting disrupted by the banks. So we’re seeing everyone moving into, you know, sort of each other’s spaces, but it’s a really exciting time. And it’s just the power that travel brings which, which highlights, which is highlighted by this.
Paula: Well, they are probably the perfect words actually to close on Rohan. I feel like we could talk for another full hour, but of course your time is precious. And the most important thing from my perspective is of course, to make sure our audiences. of the two research reports, and so we’ll make sure those are linked to in the show notes.
And so anybody who’s thinking about the power of travel, as we said, to drive that emotional connection, and for their brands, particularly in financial services, then that’s all available very easily. So we’ll make sure to link to the Collinson website so people can download it and read it through.
So listen, I think that is all the questions I have from my side, Rohan. But is there anything else that you wanted to bring to our audience attention before we wrap up?
Rohan: Thanks Paula. This has been really good. I think we covered a lot of ground and I mean, travel. The part of travel is not limited to brands that are involved in travel.
And I think that’s really the change in thinking or the mindset that I would like to challenge and what this report, while it’s focused on the card space, what the report really talks about and what we know from an aspirational lens is that travel is important to all of us. So thinking about how you can bake in those aspects into programs that may not always have a travel, direct travel angle is important. I think that’s the opportunity, that’s the freshness that you can bring to your programs which I would like to leave everyone with.
Paula: Okay. Well, perfectly well said. And of course, Rohan, we’ll make sure to link to your profile as well, because I feel like everybody’s going to want to link in with you and perhaps we’ll pick your brains on how travel might be relevant for their travel programs, even if it’s never been before. So thank you for that challenge. I think it’s super important to make sure all of our loyalty programs are as inspiring as engaging as possible.
So on that note, Rohan Balla, Vice President of Business Solutions for Collinson and Asia Pacific. Thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
Rohan: Thanks, Paula. It’s great to be here.
Paula: This show is sponsored by Wise Marketer Group, publisher of the Wise Marketer, the premier digital customer loyalty marketing resource for industry relevant news, insights, and research Wise Marketer Group also offers loyalty, education and training globally through its Loyalty Academy, which has certified nearly 900 marketers and executives in 49 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
For global coverage of customer engagement and loyalty, check out thewisemarketer.com and become a wiser marketer or subscriber. Learn more about global loyalty education for individuals or corporate training programs at loyaltyacademy.org.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. If you’d like us to send you the latest shows each week, simply sign up for the Let’s Talk Loyalty newsletter on letstalkloyalty.com and we’ll send our best episodes straight to your inbox. And don’t forget that you can follow Let’s Talk Loyalty on any of your favorite podcast platforms. And of course, we’d love for you to share your feedback and reviews. Thanks again for supporting the show.
Publisher’s Note:
This transcript was generated with the help of AI and podcast publishing tools such as Apple Podcast’s transcription service.
In the interests of efficiency and minimising our costs as a small business, it has not been checked by a human.
If you have any comments or concerns about the accuracy of this content, please do contact us for changes or corrections.
