Corporate Travel Loves Loyalty but Struggles with Personalization

Personalization is a hot topic.  How often are you asked for your frequent traveler number?

When people travel, they like to feel special and cared for on their journey.  Airlines and hotels in the US have invested billions of dollars in loyalty programs to keep travelers coming back and to also better understand the fundamental needs and buying habits of that person. These travel loyalty programs have historically catered to American business travelers where 80% are comfortable with their data being shared, especially if it means they’ll get preferred benefits in return.


According to the 2024 Bond Loyalty Report, which collected feedback from consumers between December 2023 and March 2024, and published in partnership with Visa :

85%

say “Programs make me more likely to continue doing business with brands.”

79%

say “I am more likely to recommend brands with good loyalty programs.”

73%

say “I modify amount spent to maximize program benefits.”

The more a supplier knows, the more personalized the service can become.  Like any retailer, success is measured with increased revenue as a result of repeated purchases and ancillary sales.  For travel suppliers, being able to attribute a loyalty number to a corporate traveler or trip is critical because it’s the unique identifier that allows suppliers (outside of an email address) to build a more comprehensive profile of that traveler.
The goal of any supplier is to be able to pull together a traveler’s personal and business trips into a single view.  Even if successful in pulling these together, they still struggle with personalization as this same report from Visa suggests that only a small number of members strongly agree that they receive relevant communications from the programs.

“Moreover, members are placing greater value on human interactions, which make them feel “special and recognized” .

When I travel, here are the common phrases I hear…


Regarding loyalty, travelers (1) love to hear it (2) be reminded of their benefits and (3) thanked for it.

Making someone feel special and recognized continues to be something that a person can do much better than a machine.  It’s hard to tell the loyal from the half-hearted without circumstances or context.  Sometimes the artificial intelligence falls short of the human intelligence.

When working at Sabre Corporation a few years back, I had a manager who reminded me that personalizing the traveler experience is nearly impossible unless you understand the context of the trip. Does a traveler like a king or a queen bed?  Do they like a window or aisle?  Do they prefer an SUV or a sports car?  Each of us is different and our habits are largely governed by our circumstances in which we are traveling.


While Amazon is able to infer that because you purchase dog food, you might also like dog toys, travel providers can’t do the same thing.  Why?  Because unlike a leisure trip, and in the world of corporate travel, the context of a trip is everything. In fact, the context and circumstances will determine the preferences for that trip and supercede any type of preference or personalization.

What do I mean?

  1. Visit the Bahamas frequently –  it doesn’t necessarily mean you love the beach and Florida but rather you have a customer with a major office in Nassau
  2. Flying into New York – we can’t assume you’ll want to stay in mid-town Manhattan as you normally do because this time you have a meeting with a customer in Brooklyn
  3. No window seat – you’re flying with a colleague and for once you might want that middle seat because you want to sit together and catch-up on the flight
  4. Need the cheapest rental car– not this time because your team is arriving from around the country and you’re going to share a car to the remote offsite destination
  5. Staying at a Hilton again – not this time as the team meeting is being held at a Marriott

So while personalization in corporate travel is near impossible without context, persona creation is now a reality.  While we’ve always relied on the persona of a road warrior, we’re starting to see other personas emerge as helpful ways of organizing preferences and ways to steer behavior.  Sometimes steering is focused on individual groups, but other times it’s broader.

According to a recent April 2024 whitepaper by Mastercard published in cooperation with BTN Group , nearly half (47%) of the surveyed travel decision-makers described their last policy change as a tightening to simplify employee choices and better control costs.


At HRS Group, our approach to influencing behavior involves segmenting data into personas that allow us to understand and cater to both the collective and individual preferences of travelers.

Rather than solely trying to create personalizing services, we design offerings that cater to the unique preferences and behaviors of specific traveler personas.
By understanding these broader patterns, our team is developing products and services that align with the needs of each group. By also applying these insights, we can then optimize travel experiences proactively, ensuring we don’t just react to past events but anticipate and fulfill future preferences.


We’re one of the first companies in corporate travel to use predictive data analytics and AI to future-proof corporate lodging programs.

If you’d like, check out an upcoming series I’ll post in the coming weeks (also below) by one of my colleagues, Dr. Henning Schmidt, our VP of Data Science as he explains the differences between personalization and personas. With more and more data, it’s easy to be overwhelmed and not know where to start. If you’d like to understand the differences as it relates to lodging, let me know and I’ll personally walk you through how we distinguish these!

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