Loyalty cards when buying or acquiring tourist services have stopped having an influence on the consumption of leisure travelers in Spain. This is demonstrated by the data from the second wave of the 2016 Tourism Barometer prepared by the consulting firm Brain Trust Consulting Services. According to the Barometer, only one in four Spaniards who travel for leisure regularly use the loyalty cards of companies related to the tourism sector. Of those who use them, 52% do so to accumulate points Bahrain Mobile Database compared to 32% who use them to redeem them and only 16% who use them for both purposes. For Ángel García Butragueño, head of the Tourism and Leisure Division of Brain Trust CS and Director of the Tourism Barometer, “Customer loyalty in the tourism industry is now something much more complex than giving them points for their purchases. New travelers expect from companies a personalized treatment, based on their customs and preferences, demand tailored offers and, although price continues to be a relevant factor, 
The analysis of travelers’ data, through an intelligent use of Big Data, will be essential in understanding the client, and in its application to offer them completely personalized proposals. The travelers interviewed state that, far from being members of a loyalty club, which are less and less Brother Cell Phone List selective, what they want is to feel unique, and that the offer given to them is individualized, and not only with quantitative but also qualitative benefits. As can be seen from the Barometer data, it seems that the use of loyalty cards is not carried out due to a need to lower prices, nor to obtain prizes that would not be available to users without them. Because, in fact, the greatest use of loyalty cards is among people with the highest family income (over € 60,000) and by age, young people under 35 years of age are the ones who use them the least.
“Young people demand much more from brands, and they are the travelers of the future,” says García Butragueño. “On the one hand, they demand multichannel, to be able to access and purchase tourism products from wherever they want and through any device. On the other, they look for innovative, differentiated and personalized offers that, despite having a good price, indicate that they are acquiring something unique. designed especially for them. ” In an increasingly globalized world, where thanks to technology travelers have immediate access to all information, tourism providers must place themselves in the minds of consumers from an emotional point of view if they want to retain their users, since, once the product has been commoditized, they behave in a promiscuous way with respect to brands, through the philosophy of “smart shopping”. Despite this change in mentality, there are still cards that are going to be and are being used this summer, such as airline, hotel, and gas station cards.
Leisure travel users who do use them opt for some loyalty cards over others, with Iberia being the leader in airlines with 51%, followed by Vueling with 12% and Air Europa with 10%. NH Hoteles leads hotel loyalty cards with 29%, followed by Meliá with 19%. Regarding other providers, Travel Club ranks first with 46%, and after it, gas station cards with 20%, highlighting the low use of the Renfe card with a meager 4%, or car rental cards with a marginal percentage of 2%. By Autonomous Communities, the Canary Islands, and the Basque Country with 36% of use, they are positioned as the most likely to use loyalty cards compared to Catalonia with 20%, and the Valencian Community with 14%, where the use of these cards It is notably lower, while in Madrid 28% are used. Companies in the travel industry have the opportunity before them to look at and learn from other more advanced sectors, where the concept of loyalty has become more sophisticated, offering spaces and communities in which the frequent customer not only benefits from the discounts of the loyalty programs, but rather communicates, shares and disseminates their experiences, with the feeling of belonging to similar and exclusive groups, with benefits not so much economic but social, according to the statements of the travelers interviewed. They have also concluded in their answers that the loyalty programs of airlines, hotels, rent a car, and even travel agencies, have stagnated in time, and have a certainly obsolete format, while they await new, more revolutionary concepts.
