The golf travel agencies are in a really challenging situation when golf tourists can switch easily from one distribution channel to another. In short, people have many booking options at their fingertips. Customer loyalty is not a simple issue in 2018.
The Wise Marketer | Maritz research created 4 loyalty “types”. I will list the two biggest groups:
- The biggest group, the Transient Loyalists – totaling 68% – they considered themselves loyal to individual brands but were susceptible to be convinced to move to a competitor.
- Mercenary Loyalists – 55% – who feel like that through loyalty programs companies want to “buy” them.
Future golf travel agency loyalty programs
In my belief customer loyalty, just like customer centricity and customer engagement is a strategy and not just a program. Every initiative, service, and product of a golf travel agency should be about providing exceptional, personalized customer experience to our customers.
Customer loyalty will be the output of a successful customer engagement across the touchpoints of a customer journey. So it is really obvious that these golf travel agency loyalty programs must be customized according to your customers’ need, expectations, and behavior.
One of the biggest mistakes of travel agency loyalty programs that they are based on one one-size-fits-all approach. Our golf tourist customer must feel that we understand and value them.
The path to Customer Centricity begins with Engagement
Golf travel agencies should flare up their contact by providing information, incentives, offers, and special treatment where they are on the journey. This way they will be able to nurture their connection into deeper relationships.
You should think about how can you make the entire experience engaging for your customers. The loyalty program is just one element of such an experience.
Earning points in a loyalty program are really boring and people can easily give up collecting them. People will be keen on signing up for the loyalty card program if the offered incentive is relevant and motivating to them. Don’t forget to have simple rules for earning and redeeming points.
A really interesting challenge is how to keep up the engagement with our golf travel agency between two golf holidays and trips and build enduring relationships. The real loyal customer who is engaged with the brand on a consistent basis.
We must not forget either at the very same time that differentiation is also important to gain attention and interest among the plethora of travel agency loyalty programs.
Golf travel agency loyalty program
Before I started to write this post, I was thinking about which golf travel agencies have got a loyalty program. I went through the list of the winners of the 2017 World Golf Awards and asked people if they have heard of any.
It was really difficult for me to find golf travel agency loyalty programs. I could find only 3:
- Tee Times Golf Agency (Portugal) – they offer between 3 to 10% discount depending on the number of players and nights you have booked. Although the offer is not presented as elegantly as we can see on Golfbreaks.com, however, you got much more information about the desired golf destination in Portugal and Spain. In addition to this, you can enjoy many useful services (E.g. golf club and trolley rental, green fees). Thanks to their friendly communication style they will have a much better chance to deepen their relationship with their customers and keep up the engagement with them.
- Golfbreaks.com’s Breakpoints loyalty program. I found this program sounds like a generic one.
- LeClub Golf partnered with Tee Off Travel. Their loyalty program is called Advantages. Here it was interesting to find a concierge service among the benefits.