Millennium Hotels simplifies loyalty offering
Focus on exclusivity and experiences

Millennium Hotels & Resorts has launched My Millennium Guest Reward Program with the intention of simplifying its loyalty offering. Read more ...

ALL the focus now on loyalty
Accor CEO to revamp 'rather dismal' programmeAccor hospitality group has appointed Ogilvy as global marketing and advertising agency as it plans the launch of its new ALL loyalty programme. Read more ...

Make the returning easy
* Customers won’t come back after bad experience
* Rapid normalisation of returns

Retailers who don’t offer an easy returns process are losing sales and customer loyalty, with 84% of shoppers saying they won’t come back to a brand if they have a poor returns experience. Read more ...

Chipotle launches rewards with Venmo
Integrated digital approach cuts order time by two thirds

Chipotle, the US fast casual dining chain is rolling out a new loyalty programme working with mobile wallet Venmo to publicise its proposition. Highlighting its ability to cater for those on special diets – everyone joining the programme gets free fries and guacamole with their first order after signing up. Read more ...

Carrefour in China launches 100% digital loyalty programme
Eco, healthy and Jamie Oliver
Carrefour may be following a culling strategy in Europe, where it announced plans for 250 store closures in 2018, but in China profits are up 11% and announcements  coming thick and fast. Read more ...

Vodafone adds Drops to Voxi

Vodafone is ramping up its loyalty programme for the under 30s with Voxi Drops and unlimited social media use. Read more ...

The Loyalty Debate
Should my brand be in a loyalty coalition?
Do reward points really earn loyalty?
…should I be thinking about blockchain?
These, and other important questions, were covered in a debate held recently at the Visa Innovation Center in London, and convened by Annich McIntosh of Loyalty Magazine.
Currency Alliance was invited to participate along with Dan Truscott, Head of Business Development, Loyalty at Visa, and Iain Pringle of consultancy New World Loyalty. Read more ...

Comment:
Urban farm concept being explored by Waitrose and John Lewis

There is something a little sad about the announcement from Waitrose and John Lewis that they are working on the concept of ‘urban farms’ in their stores that will enable customers to pick their own produce. Read more ...

Ryanair following subscription model
New loyalty initiative has 10,000 member goal

Ryanair is following easyJet in offering paid for benefits for frequent flyers. Launching later this year is a programme that gives subscribers a host of benefits usually provided on a paid for basis for a fixed yearly price. In this way, Ryanair may encourage traveller loyalty amongst those who don’t have a better option. Read more ...

Air Canada, American Express partner on loyalty programme
10 year agreement begins life after Aeroplan
Air Canada has signed a 10-year agreement with American Express which includes a new loyalty programme run on co-branded payment cards. Read more ...

Digital and rewards driving growth in KFC China
Self-disruption to achieve youth acceptance

Article by Paula Thomas

KFC in China is the largest restaurant chain in the largest country in the world.
The brand now boasts in excess of 120 million members and it has a staggeringly successful customer recognition and rewards app. But it took transformation and self-disruption to achieve this success. Read more ...

GDPR and Loyalty - a marriage made in heaven?
Simon Hinks, director, Parallel Marketing assesses data regulation as an opportunity Read more ...

How Amazon Moments changes the game for loyalty programmes
Review article  by Attila Kecsmar

You might already believe that Amazon runs a loyalty programme. Its Loyalty Prime subscription service achieves retention by offering a basket-full of benefits that are lost if the customer unsubscribes. In this way they are retained. However, on Valentine’s Day, Amazon raised the bar once again, with a cross-platform, self-service loyalty feature called Amazon Moments. Read more ...

Book Review
Make Some Noise
This is a book that won’t get talked about because no-one will want their competitors to read it.The reason? It is darned good. Read more ...

How are hotels beating up OTAs?

The OTA sector (the ‘over the air’ companies such as booking.com and Expedia) spend considerable amounts marketing their sites, yet hotel direct loyalty memberships and bookings are up between 30% and 40%. How have the hotels achieved this? Interview with Cindy Estis-Green, CEO and founder, Kalibri Labs. Read more ...

Interview: Does the Barclays & £10m funding deal mean the loyalty card wallet is back?
Interview with Mike Jordan, CEO of Bink
Loyalty Magazine: Congratulations on securing your £10m funding led by Barclays, does this enable you to return to Bink’s original proposition of enabling consumers to operate all their loyalty programme memberships through the Bink app? Read more ...

Opinion: Experience more important than speed
A point of view from Dino Forte, CEO, VentricaCustomer experience (CX) has become a priority for the vast majority of organisations – or has it? With the large volumes of contact centre advisors still incentivised based on speed – typically the Average Handle Time (AHT) – CX goals are quite often unachievable. Read more ...

Loyalty and rewards as a blockchain testing ground
Loyalty Magazine explores recent initiatives using blockchain today, and points out a strong trend to use loyalty programmes and rewards as a testing ground for other enterprise wide initiatives. And then there are cryptocurrencies. The caution to go forth with care may come to mind, if you read the article on the growing numbers entering the crypto-graveyard. Featured:

Read more ...

Tough time for wallets
Retirement for Microsoft
Mobile Wallet projections
India KYC problem
Alipay QR code chosen Read more ...

Be nice to me or I’ll go - Especially if you don’t know my name
Rudeness tops charts
Retail is most definitely going through a period of uncertainty yet it is the really fixable problems like staff rudeness and lack of personalisation and loyalty that are as responsible for defections. Read more ...

Positive predictions - hooray!
Technology industry will be OK
No GDPR 4% fines expected in 2019
Brexit will get sorted
Reality check: hacking will continue What a great way to start the new year. Semafone, a provider of data security and compliance solutions for contact centres, takes an optimistic view of the outlook for the technology industry in 2019 and we like his predictions so much we have published them in full. Read more ...

Feeling strong? Here are the predictions for 2019
Making predictions for the coming year is always fraught with danger, but this year it is even more complicated – for myriad reasons ranging from political and economic through to technology and changing behaviours. However, there is no shortage of people prepared to take a gamble. Here is a selection of those that caught our eye: Read more ...

What you might have missed - 2 - FREE ACCESS
Winning coalitions will become marketplaces
Charles (Chuck) Ehredt is CEO of Currency Alliance, an organisation intent on becoming the global marketplace for loyalty collaboration. He talked to Annich McIntosh about the progress they have made, his vision for loyalty and why the industry has started accelerating its evolution. Read more ...

What you might have missed - 1 - FREE ACCESS
Charting the progress of travel loyalty to an unknown destination -
In a series of exerpts over the forthcoming holiday, we share some of the articles published in our printed magazine that got people talking.

Where is Loyalty going? And how long is it going to take to get there? These are questions that absorb the minds of all those working in loyalty. Read more ...

SPECIAL REPORT: Chinese payment giants “light years ahead”
Customer loyalty chief tenet of model
Alipay acceptance at 7-Eleven
US$15.5 trillion in mobile payments in 2017

China has embraced mobile payments with such enthusiasm, the rest of the world appear to be technology deniers. Alipay and WeChat, the main protagonists, score in terms of technology, user friendliness, number of users and ubiquity. Their data analytics are central to everything they do.
Read more ...

Ride sharing companies fight with perks
Growing competition leads to raft of new offerings
Uber rewards power users
Profile of Uber, Lyft, South African minicab programme, Careem battle with Pepsi
Why is it that after decades when cab drivers have treated their passengers with disdain verging on rudeness, do all the cab companies now feel they need a loyalty programme?
Read more ...

So you want to know what is wrong with retail….
Scott Weavers-Wright voices his frustrations
You would think that after completing one’s second company divestment – the first one for £70m, the second undisclosed - that this particular entrepreneur would be relaxed and fairly chilled about the world. But this would be far from the truth. In fact any mention of retailers leads to a stream of consciousness about short-sightedness, lack of spirit and a lock-down mentality. Read more ...

Loyalty versus subscription: Is this a boxing match?
A growing number of companies are choosing an Amazon style subscription model rather than loyalty rewards. Does this make business sense? A service provider argues her case with Loyalty Magazine.

Loyalty cryptocurrency wants to disrupt the existing order
Expansion into major world markets with blockchain
Too many loyalty programmes chasing the same customers is an argument put forward for the huge interest in marketplaces. Add blockchain into the equation to deal with the infrastructure functionality and security, plus a cryptocurrency to add consumer excitement and a hint of gamification and some are arguing that this has the potential to disrupt the loyalty business. Read more ...

Department store bankruptcy –
What it feels like from the consumer perspective