Consumers Have Developed Very Sharp Value-Detectors While Playing The Loyalty Game
	Consumers have developed very sharp value-detectors while playing the loyalty game, and they recognise that the value equation has tilted toward hotel programmes, acknowledges Rick Ferguson, editorial director, Colloquy.
Ferguson, one of the speakers during the CRM in Travel USA 2007 conference in San Francisco, says hotel programmes are absolutely becoming the equal of frequent-flyer programmes in the marketplace. Two marketplace shifts over the past five years have been driving this trend. In order to know more, EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta spoke to Ferguson. Excerpts from an interview: Marketing in the online travel space is focused on utilising better business and customer insight - even to the one-to-one customer level. To what extent do you agree with this? I agree in the sense that those companies who best leverage customer transactional data to build relationships, build added value and relevency into communications and better customer service will prevail. 'One-to-one' is largely a myth-it's more like 'one-to-few' or 'one-to-segment'-- but it can be true in the online travel space to an extent that it can't be true in the brick-and-mortar world. That's because the cost to deliver personalisation and relevence online is much lower than in the old direct-mail world. That said, companies hoping to leverage this ability will have to invest in retaining and compensating strong, talented marketers who truly understand the power of customer data. And those marketers will need the full backing of the executive team in order to succeed. It is being acknowledged that hotel rewards programmes have long been something of an afterthought to their frequent flier cousins. You recently mentioned that's starting to change. Could you elaborate on this? Hotel programmes are absolutely becoming the equal of frequent-flyer programmes in the marketplace. Two marketplace shifts over the past five years have been driving this trend. The first shift has seen the frequent-flyer mile become devalued in the marketplace. Airline programmes are a victim of their own success; they became so adapt at selling miles through their credit card and retail partners that they flooded the marketplace with currency. That left too many members chasing two few reward seats. At the same time, airlines reduced capacity after 9-11 and started flying smaller planes with fewer seats available for upgrade. Today, if you're a silver member of an airline programme, you're completely out of luck-- what few upgrades are available go to the really valuable gold and platinum members. Finally, we've also seen the airlines institute a variety of redemption and other programme fees in order to control costs and dramatically increased the mileage cost of a free flight-- moves that are received poorly by customers. External Source - For the complete article click here