#209: Loyalty & Awards Conference News for Travel Loyalty Professionals

The Loyalty & Awards Conference is the largest international loyalty conference for the travel industry.

In this episode of “Let’s Talk Loyalty”, we are joined by Ravindra Bhagwanani, Chairman of Loyalty & Awards, all about the exciting plans for this year’s event taking place in October in Madrid.

Ravindra shares his extensive loyalty industry experience and his love of airline loyalty marketing, and how the conference came to life almost 18 years ago.

Listen to hear what you can expect from this year’s event – THE premier place to be for travel loyalty experts, offering superb opportunities to learn from exceptional industry leaders and connect with your loyalty industry colleagues.

Show Notes:

1) Ravindra Bhagwanani, Managing Director at Global Flight and Chairman of Loyalty & Awards

2) Loyalty & Awards conference website

Audio Transcript

#209: Loyalty & Awards Conference News for Travel Loyalty Professionals (43m)
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. This show is brought to you by the Loyalty & Awards conference, the leading annual event for loyalty professionals in the travel industry. Make sure to join us this year from the 10th to the 12th of October in Madrid for the perfect mix of inspiring content and exciting awards, check out Loyaltyandawards.com for more information and to register.

Paula Thomas

00:00:53
Hello and welcome to episode 209 of Let’s Talk Loyalty. As you just heard, the Loyalty & Awards conference is the largest annual conference for loyalty managers in the travel industry. So in today’s show, I’m excited to be chatting with Ravindra Bhagwanani, co-organizer of the event, which is now in its 18th year. Last October, the Loyalty & Awards conference took place in Dubai. And I absolutely loved it. So this year I’m supporting Ravindra and his team letting you know all about the plans for the conference in Madrid.

Paula Thomas

00:01:34
So if you work in loyalty in the travel industry, I hope you enjoy listening to the latest, exciting plans for the Loyalty & Awards 2022 conference in Madrid in October. So Ravindra. I am so happy to be talking to you today. How are you doing?

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:01:56
Yeah, my pleasure so we look forward to our discussion. Obviously I’ve been following your sessions for a long time and yeah, very honored and very pleased that you have me today.

Paula Thomas

00:02:09
Wonderful. It absolutely is. And you’re joining us from France. Am I correct?

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:02:13
I’m basically in Southern France. So already spring time, I understand in some other parts of the world, it’s still a bit colder, but yes, very nice location. So, so any, it’s not really helpful for loyalty, to be honest, because obviously we have Airbus and ATR and all the engineering stuff here. But if anyone listening to that stops by into Luiz, Seminole, and happy to meet over for coffee.

Paula Thomas

00:02:36
Ooh, I hope to take you up on that at some point of Ravindra. Very exciting. So listen, I’m dying to talk about your conference this year. That’s happening as we know in Madrid and October, but before we get into talking all about, I suppose, your entire career in loyalty and how the conference came about, tell me, first of all, you know, I’m very keen to understand, I suppose, the best loyalty programs for everybody on the show. I suppose more from a personal perspective, because I know professionally it’s hard to choose. There’s so many good ones, but do you have a favorite loyalty program at the moment of Ravindra?

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:03:09
Well, that’s a very good question. And obviously a very often then when I talk to journalists, that’s the key question. People are going to ask knowing that via benchmark 220 programs out there. And so we really are really familiar with all of it all plugs. And I’m just talking about the frequent flyer programs plus obviously couple of hundred other programs in the travel industry. Well, you know, the easy answer is actually there is not really one favorite program because obviously a bit, some points are more engaged with them. He does this because they work for me personally, but it doesn’t mean it does mean that they really work for everybody. But if I look back to my, as you mentioned, I spent a while, I actually made my whole entire active life in a loyalty program.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:03:51
So spending over 26 years now because I created a global side company back in 96. So I think, I think these are the early days when, when programs started and, and I still am very fond of the British learned lady BMI program, which just had amazing what amazing value for, for members. I mean, I assume it didn’t work out financially for these guys, but from a customer perspective, if source grade and I mean, just for the younger generation, just imagine, I’m just imagine a business class, a return flight to the U.S. From Europe for 67,500 miles. I will never forget that. I mean, in many programs you use talking to get one way economy cost by today for this amount and yeah, that’s great value.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:04:37
So I understood obviously very early, it can not work from a commercial perspective for the operator, but that came in all the problems that didn’t have any financial setups and stuff like that. If it’s just a, really a customer tool and, and yeah, I was taking advantage of that.

Paula Thomas

00:04:51
Fantastic. Yeah. It’s a great insight for a vendor. I do really think, you know, we have to get that value proposition extremely compelling as we know for consumers, what of course the, the profitability has to stand up as well. So yes, it’s a shame. We can’t get those kinds of value redemptions these days, but anyway, hopefully somebody will come up with something similar at some point. But tell me,

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:05:14
Yeah, maybe, maybe just to come back to your parents, I think it’s a very fair point. And, and, you know, I think the one thing which VR bring to the table, obviously, I mean, we know how programs should work and, but you also know how customers take because you only, if you have a range of services at global slide, obviously, I mean, we do the conference, we do the consulting part, but we also work with end consumers. And I think this gives us, gives us a perfect picture, understanding of the business and, and be off, maybe talk to airlines while they have all the thinking about, you know, liability management and all that stuff. It’s just super important. But at the end of the day, I would say 80%. And that is maybe we can talk about that later. I think 80% of the programs are suffering today because they’re too much focused on internal perspectives and internal questions, which are not really relevant to the customer.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:06:02
Honestly. I mean, whether you spin-off your program over, you do a data evaluation, certain points, it has no meaning whatsoever for, for the end consumer. And the question is really today, how are we engaging consumers? And I think that’s something which we’re bringing to the table that we see both sides of the, of the, of the market. We bring this to a table of balls in our consulting war, but also it reflects afterwards at the conference because we not only, we’re not only talking, talking about the DVT, the operator side, but we really trying to open the eyes for the wider picture. And that is unfortunately something which, which has been got lost board law over the last decade, I would say,

Paula Thomas

00:06:43
Wow, that’s a very interesting perspective. Rabindra and I didn’t know you had any work on the consumer side. What kind of work is it that you’re doing in that way?

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:06:52
Listen, BBB do two things. I mean, we work really bit the typical end consumer with frequent flyers. Maybe just helping them really to get to a fly programs, analyzing their profile on a, on a highly precise basis and be telling them okay, best for them for you. It’s program a, a program B because you know, too often salespeople are in the mindset. Okay, I’m flying on Emirates to take a local example for you. And I, I need to be measured Emirates, both have to have partnerships with 10 out of 10 or 12 other airlines like anybody in your lines. And maybe it works better for somebody to be in a jet poo program, still continuing to fly on an Emirates.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:07:32
But because the jet blue program is almost as toxic completely differently than the emulates program. And it just makes sense to play around with these partnerships. And that’s a Proust as allies, which we are, which are carrying out flyers. So, which gives us a really good understanding, obviously how people really think. And honestly, the majority of people, yes. If the fleet flies, obviously they won’t have any benefits and stuff like that, but they really, they, they, they do not discuss okay about the same things as airlines. And, and I think that is, again, something very important because we do have, as an industry view, we do have customer facing tools. So please adjust them to the customer and not, and not to your, to your financial department or anything like that.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:08:14
Yes, we need, again, we need to expect all that, all this needs to be taken into account, but we definitely need a vital understanding of what we’re talking about here.

Paula Thomas

00:08:21
Yeah. I totally agree. Ravindra. So yeah, the more customer love actually to use a strong word, I would say I had Fred Reichheld on the show there just before Christmas. And you know, many listeners would know him as the inventor of net promoter score. And I couldn’t believe how often the word love came up in that business conversation. And that’s exactly what I’m hearing is missing from what you’re seeing, if the customer perspective and the value proposition is only being driven by the financial perspective. Now, as you said in the last decade that Sam that’s disappointing.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:08:54
Oh, because I mean, he’s fully, right? Because you don’t be talking about, well, I call it cost-relationship, call it, whatever you call it, but the word relationship comes up in there and your relationship is very close to love. So, so, so I fully agree and, you know, I always say, well, if it’s a relationship tool, you just look at your personal life, how you treat your, your, your spells or whatever. And if you apply some of these techniques in your loyalty program, while we would all be box Federoff, but unfortunately today the programs do too little at that level. But I think at the end of the day via getting back to that because we are competitive and, and yeah, and somebody who’s doing things better than others, they, they definitely, they, they, they managed to engage customers better than others.

Paula Thomas

00:09:39
Yeah. Yeah. And I’m intrigued to figure out or to ask you Rabindra how on earth did you get into loyalty? I saw that you did a degree in engineering.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:09:49
Yes. Yes. I mean, I didn’t, I’m a degree. I don’t know where everybody saw that. Actually. I didn’t know that all this information is so public on LinkedIn. Okay. Fine. So, so basically what I did, I, yes, I started aeronautical engineering and all that you do in messenger. What’s much more interesting in the marketing side. So I kind of mix, I got an engineering engineer degree, but I’ve also actually much closer to all the way to the marketing side. And, as such, I was always interested in combining both things. And then how I got into Deloitte program as well.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:10:28
It was a post the story actually, well, first it started out my studying. I mean, I’m, I’m a spring sport and saw my parents were in Switzerland. I started in Berlin and I did one in Toulouse. I was flying a little bit around in Europe and this was back in, I think, 19 92 93, when the program started in Europe at one point, my father, Hey, next time you fly in from Berlin to Zurich, you should enroll in the mass more broken because the launch for comedy central, et cetera. So I think that’s the first time that I really heard about these programs. And he said, no, because he had offered so much because he got some with, with a friend bulldozer miles from that. So he had a personal interest and to, okay, so I just covered that.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:11:07
And then after my studies, I, I was looking for job and I was opening onto a tool to work worldwide and Alan cetera. At one point I got in, I got invited by Emma Cole and David trusting the prelaunch phases and they wanted to see me for an interview. So I flew on the cheapest airfare ticket, which I could get from, from Berlin to, to Hong Kong. And I earned on that trip because I think I was a new member. So I got involved in boards and stuff like that. I earned on that trip at really cheap economy fare 19,300 miles, which were enough for free flights within Europe and a free flight. At that time.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:11:47
It didn’t mean that you had to spend hundreds of you as a taxi. It was really, it was really free. And that’s why I said, Hey, there’s some value these programs. I probably, I understood that something economy cannot work if for cheaper, a ticket to Hong Kong, you get a free flight and you up. But yeah, I mean, I, that’s just, that’s just how I got home a hookup at a personal level, understanding as a business. And then while I discovered as Randy Peterson, the US are doing, doing some great stuff around the topic, he was obviously all already active. And so there’s no, there’s nobody reading you up taking care of that topic. And because all the programs didn’t in Europe, they’re, they’re launching a 92 93.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:12:28
So it was still a pretty new topic. And Hey, well, it will be great opportunity to position exactly. But he maintained over 26 years. So to, to position both on the consumer side and on the, on the operator side, when I said, you know, I was young, I was 26 when I created global side, this I’m not credible. I’m not credible. If, if today, if I’m going to say, I know how to design programs, I have no experience and nothing. So I gave myself two years to work on the consumer side, which is, let’s say it’s more an analytical work than really an intellectual challenge. So I build up the business as a one man show on the consumer side.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:13:08
And after two years while I started to, to go to airlines and, and yeah, I mean, Dave, we’re interested obviously in, in having such a resource, it’s such a knowledgeable resource and that’s how it started. I grew into the internal consulting business. So it was really a long journey. And, and yes, well, now, now, as I’m just talking about that right now, actually you maybe hear my voice, that I’m getting a bit sad because I remember my first business trip. We never worked together. And I mean, usually we do not disclose any customers, but the first business to available device, he was actually to Kyiv, to Ukraine, international airlines. And, and so, you know, that’s, that’s just how life is.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:13:49
I mean, everything comes together at one point. And, but I remember, you know, again, we didn’t get any business out of that trip, but he, you know, how amazed it was at the, at the age of 28 to be invited by a carrier, it’d be invited business class ticket on a great service. I mean, they, they still had a great service at that time, et cetera. So it was just a great feeding and, and they did everything took off very, very quickly. And it was only, only another six years later in 2004 that I really got into conference business. So it must be building up naturally. So again, did a B2C business to B, to B business. And then out of the B2B business, while I was contacted by some persons ask about this to any confidence in the loyalty business.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:14:33
And this has no that there’s all that. Then we started the whole thing. And so, yeah, now everything makes sense. If you hear a story 20 years later, you will own the moment. Obviously you had to understand, okay, you didn’t know, is it an opportunity to north, but, but everything, everything builds up nicely as indeed. Yes,

Paula Thomas

00:14:52
Yes. Yeah, no, it does. It sounds like a perfectly planned career identifying the opportunities and, you know, making sure to go after and chase them and build your reputation. But yes, in the moment it always feels like, okay, let’s try, might be risky. Don’t know if it’ll work, but I know for the conference specifically, I think we’re coming up to the 18th one this year. If I’m right for Ventura,

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:15:13
It must be, must be the seventies or eighties. Well, I think it’s a, is it something like that? Yeah. I stopped counting because I’ll basically in my conference career. So I had to basically switch steps my conference career. So, so again, all of us keeping in mind, it is, it is not our main business. And until now it is not our main business. So it’s of all this society activity. So I, I partnered initially we two different companies first with added information. So, so, so credits to my, to my former friends at the company, because they, they rented the conference business and we really religious disloyalty loyalty conference initially on the name of FFP, we launched it for four years with, with them.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:15:55
And then at one point while the event grew nevertheless, pretty considerably. So I failed that first move to, to move to a different partner. I T I teamed up with bitter flight global. So obviously which led to a lot of confusion because we are global slide, they are flat global. So the publisher notably off the airline business magazine. And so again, obviously, I mean, there were some business connections because I vaguely wrote for the airline business magazine. So there were some, some connections there and then they grew the conference business and we just took the whole thing to a much more professional level. And so I was running the conference for 10 years in a, in a joint venture set up with them meeting. Basically these guys, they, they took care of everything which was operational marketing, et cetera.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:16:41
And I was kind of the guy for the agenda and giving the credibility because obviously I knew what was going on in loyalty industry. And, and you’ve go all these since the beginning, we moved positioning. We, we both partners. And, and even now as we do the conference on under our own structure, all this position, positioning the event as obviously not really a fully commercial event, but video is something where we focused very much on content. So, so one of the, one of the topics or the themes, which you’re having at the conference and which is all this, it leads to discussions each year, understandably, but basically with a few exceptions, we do not put any suppliers on the agenda.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:17:22
Show me, show me any other industry event where this is the case. Usually say, well, I’m paying you $10,000 and buying some, some seals of the package. And I’m getting on the agenda. That is the usual useless setup of commercial conference. And we don’t find that you really won’t be really warmed is set up that people are coming each year because of the content. And yes, of course you have suppliers there and a decade that all that is fair enough, but via not setting something that people say, okay, maybe they come lawns because we do a good, there’s no value just conference. We are not coming back. And that’s the only reason that by after 18 years, we are still there actually.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:18:02
And, and so this is the main thing. Well, we stopped the cooperation with flight global in 2018 and in 2019. So I build up my own team. We have an event manager. And, and so since 2019, we’ve been running the event, our, our own, our own name, and we burned it into the current Loyalty & Awards, loyalty rewards, bond funds.

Paula Thomas

00:18:26
Yeah. And it is a wonderful team of Indra. So yeah, we’ll give a shout out to your team. They’re doing a fantastic job. So I’m very impressed and exactly to your point. And I’m not just saying this because you just said it, but I was lucky enough obviously, to attend the conference here in October last year. So I had considered going the previous year. I think you’d reached out to me and Dubai to Vancouver was, was, it was quite difficult for me to justify again, you know, I’m a one-woman show, so it’s a, it’s a long way to go. And I didn’t actually know really about the conference and I was only starting podcasting. So it probably didn’t have the same global network back in 2020 or 2019, I think even at that stage, but certainly in Dubai last year, it was the quality of the content that convinced me that wherever it’s happening in 2022, I’m coming.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:19:17
Okay. That sounds good. Thank you very much. I think we may have been a bit unlucky in 2020, but we went to Vancouver because it’s probably the only major city in the rules that Emirates doesn’t fly to. So, so good news is the 22. We will be at a destination. It’s a, it’s a six hour flight away from Dubai. So we’ll be, we’ll be in Madrid and we look forward to having you there.

Paula Thomas

00:19:43
Oh, it’s super exciting. So, I mean, we’re in April now, or then Dre, so quite early, I guess, in terms of you planning the content and the schedule, but for anyone listening, I suppose, bearing in mind that there’s a lot of people in loyalty in the US the UK and Australia, and not just actually in travel loyalty, although your conference definitely is focused on travel loyalty, but what would you say are the key kind of topics that you’re expecting to come up in Madrid this year?

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:20:11
So, so just to, to be friends with that version, just two wheels for everybody. So we did the conference, as Paula mentioned in, in Dubai, in October, 2021. So it was really in the middle at the end of whatever, eh, pandemic. So we manage that. We had to promise from the beginning that we make it a hundred percent live event. So we delivered on the, on that format. So just be sure that we will be doing something, obviously even, even a bigger and better in, in Madrid. So we understand that the advice now, I mean, there are still obviously restrictions and discussion of COVID is not completely over. So we’ll, we’ll be definitely managing that IMiD rate.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:20:52
If you mentioned 21 in, in, in Dubai, we, we will do it everywhere. And, and yes, it’s all we be looking at really turning the COVID page because we, in Dubai, we had, nevertheless, if you had a positive forward-looking agenda, but we had never asked obviously 30 or 40% of topics, which were touching on COVID and we really turn that page and looking forward. So we see some signs form for people coming out stronger off that, of that pandemic. They had some time, some time maybe to refocus on things. And, and I think we’ll be reflecting some, some new interesting ideas, how to, how to strengthen the program further, how to take them to the next level.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:21:34
It’s, you know, it’s a continuous journey. And, and as all this bill be looking at the right mix of let’s say trends like, you know, like sustaining sustainability, just to mention one topic, which was already a image topic, which we had in, in a way, of course, new technologies and, and just really to give a wide redivide frame, a wide perspective of the topic to anybody involved in the, in the, in the travel industry. So we are not, we are not Constance for financial experts or for CRM experts or anything like that. It’d be really conference for anybody involved in, in loyalty, looking at the topics from again, from practical case studies presented by airlines and hotels to, to, to, to really cover the whole topic.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:22:23
So some of the confirmed speakers, then I just invite you to, to discover on the loyalty rewards.com website, the first agenda, which is still evolving. But if you already have a couple of confirmed speakers from companies like United alcohol, Caribbean airlines, miles to name just a few. So, so we definitely looking forward to having a good setup of, of people worldwide, again, of worldwide event, as you mentioned. So the only do one event a year, but it is via what 18 locations <inaudible> continents. So, so DC a completed, there will be no, no event in the Americas, but if you really want to, to attend this, I think we just leading event in the, in, in the travel industry, please make a demand rate because otherwise you will be missing out on a, on a great opportunity in 22.

Paula Thomas

00:23:15
Yeah. Yes, you’re absolutely right. And actually one of the, well, one of the things I suppose I really did respect last year of vendor, was that commitment that you gave that the conference was going to go ahead 100% live. And of course you had to plan it in, I guess, you know, even late 20, 20, like 12 months out, maybe in order to get the venue organized for us and, you know, going through the worst of the COVID pandemic and still pulling it off, I thought that was a very brave of you because there’s no other conference. I think certainly that I’ve been to in the last 12 months. So it was a big decision for you and I’m worked super well.

Ravindra Bhagwanani

00:23:54

Oh, well, thank you. And I think while it’s kind of the commitment, the old to the industry, I mean, we did our last event in February, the previous event in February, 2020 in Vancouver. And if I survived at that beginning at the beginning of the pandemic when we had the first cases appear, we need to leave and in New York, et cetera. So literally we were all onsite and, and everything was started to shut down on it. And so I remember we sat down with the team the day of the conference and we said, okay, well, what’s going to happen. And we said, we said on that day after the conference, because the February staff has all, so since the beginning, it was our traditional slots for the conference. And obviously, I mean, if you remember the situation back