Blind Loyalty Challenge with Jitendra Jain

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Hi there, I'm Amanda Cromhoe from Truth. Welcome to the Blind Laugherty

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Challenge.

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We interview world experts in loyalty blindly. We're hoping to create insight,

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spontaneity

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and a lot of fun through the challenge. The challenge is about promoting the

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Blind Laugherty

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Trust and my book called Blind Laugherty, a hundred and one loyalty concept

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radically simplified.

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All profits from the book go towards the trust. We hope you enjoy the Blind L

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augherty Challenge.

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So for another Blind Laugherty Challenge, I get the absolute honor of

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interviewing someone I

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don't know who I haven't met before who was introduced to me by Dr. Nijib Benk

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ader from Emmerit

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Skywards. So JJ, welcome to the Blind Laugherty Challenge. Thank you Amanda.

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Thank you for having me

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on. This is an absolutely amazing initiative that you're doing and really happy

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to be part of it.

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And of course, thank you to Nijib who has been a friend for over a decade and I

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really admire what

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he does. So thank you for the momentation there Nijib. No, wonderful. He was

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fabulous on the

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challenge and you will be as well. So thank you for joining us. For those of

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you who don't know JJ,

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he's the Vice President of loyalty and partnerships for Emmer for Marriott. So

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very, very significant

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player in the loyalty and reward space. So I'm actually going to kick off

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straight into the

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the hotel environment. So chapter 75 of Blind Laugherty talks about travel and

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hotel rewards.

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And our chapters are short and sharp. There are only two pages but obviously

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Marriott has a

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place in the book of Blind Laugherty. But I'm not going to ask you about

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Marriott. I just want to

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ask you from your point of view what has been the most positive and surprising

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hotel loyalty or

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rewards experience you've had? That's a great question Amanda. And I think if I

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must use a personal

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example and you know, I'm a bit of a introvert, right? So I do like to get away

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from time to time

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and the amazing thing about having amazing hospitality brands like ours and

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program like ours is just

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the tremendous amount of choice you get, right? And we have to connect you to

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all the people and

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the places and the passions that you love. And I have a tendency once in a

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while when I'm

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fed up of everything to just take my backpack and go away for the weekend to a

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new place.

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And three destinations that really inspired me and loyalty made all the

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difference because I

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enabled access these destinations that I didn't know and go with confidence.

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You know, one was

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put on where we have a couple of amazing meridian hotels. Another was Nepal

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where we got a few

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hotels as well and Iceland was another one as well. Oh wow. So yeah, I do like

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to get away from it

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all but loyalty sort of makes you feel safe and connected that you're getting

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the best

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member experience and recognition and you can explore new places from safe

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space.

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It's incredibly, you use the word safe and almost security blanket. So I

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mentioned in blind loyalty

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actually how if you're not flying on your, if you're not flying on your

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favourite airline,

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how Rory Sutherland from Olga Vee, the deputy chairman of Olga Vee spoke around

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I just feel 30% more anxious than that before I get on the flight. So it's

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wonderful that you've

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how you've connected that with that sort of safety and security of doing

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something quite

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spontaneous about going off to a new destination for the weekend. So I love

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that. I love the connection

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between the personal, the personal sort of adventure spirit and yet just having

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that little comfort

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blanket. So question, my second question is also around a bit more technical

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now. So in chapter 58,

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we talk about points expiry which is obviously a very emotive subject. What's

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your view on points

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expiry? Yeah, I know it's an emotional topic, right? And

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I think you've got to find the right balance and it points to you know you've

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got to have some sort of

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time-bound nature of what you offer. But I think it's an incentive as well to

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make it easy

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to maintain those points, right? I think you know if you look at Marry Pongwe

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for example,

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you know if you have any transaction at all in a space of a couple of years,

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you know you can keep

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your points active and your status active. And I think what that does is it

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sort of

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helps your nudges you gently to explore more options as well because there's so

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many things

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you could do right to on points. It's not just the stay and that's the beauty

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of creating a

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travel ecosystem right out of platform. It's not just a hotel or a key program,

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it's a travel

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ecosystem where you can get a credit card and earn points every day. You know

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that's in your wallet

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24/7/365, your brands in your wallet, right? You've got car hire, you've got

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the ability to

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transfer currency to airlines. We now offer F&B, right? So if you're not

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traveling and you're in the

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local market, you can go and earn and burn your points. So I think a points exp

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iry definitely

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necessary. It definitely makes the finance folks happier because you can get

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the liability of your

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balance sheet. But I think for the member, you need to be careful about how you

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sort of

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communicate that right and expire those points. I mean I've had lots of

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experiences with programs

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that I've only engaged in once or twice and I've lost those points and it hurts

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, it doesn't

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hurt that much but with my favorite programs, I want to make sure it's sort of

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easy to keep that

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active with the lowest amount of effort, right? Because you want to keep that

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stickiness with

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the program. Yes and if you're keeping active no matter how small the exchange,

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your interaction

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with the brand may be, then you're hoping that as you do in Bonvoy that the

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miles or points remain

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active for you. The worst though, we get a lot of emotional feedback around the

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forced expiry,

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even if you're active based on date of issuance. So there's all the different

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options that brands

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take and we all know the commercial dilemma that the finance commercials need

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to place on the

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discussion but at the end of the day the customer needs to feel that they and I

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think as you said,

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the brands that you don't engage in, you kind of know that they're going to

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expire if you can't

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engage with that brand more and I think a sensible consumer would understand

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that.

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My last question, so we're talking about points expiring so obviously the

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opposite of that is

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redemption. We have a couple of chapters in Blind Loyalty chapter 53 and 54

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that talk about,

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one talks about redemption in a broader sense and one then talks about

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behavioural change

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and the sort of psychological psychology of redemption. What have you seen to

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be behavioural

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change post a redemption? That's a great question and you know, so we typically

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see just I think

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stepping away from redemption, starting with the program itself, we typically

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see that once somebody

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joins the program and after your second stay, that's when the sticky notes

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start in

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precinct because you start seeing what you're getting out of the program and

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the first redemption,

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I would really call the hero's state, especially at a hotel because that's

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where your hard end

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currency is going to work for you and typically what happens, right? I mean,

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you might be traveling

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in business and collecting points and then the hero stays really with your

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family, right? But

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you want to look good, you want to have everything go right? So we really focus

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a lot on the redemption

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state. I think if you've had a successful redemption state, that creates that

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emotional

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stickiness that you really want for the program and if you notice a lot of our

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marketing material

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as well, right? Maybe sell co-brand cards or market the program itself. It's

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these aspirational

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destinations that people want to sort of bank up for, right? And we saw that

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throughout the

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pandemic as well, it was amazing, right? Because people couldn't travel and

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that made them want

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to travel even more. And yeah, people couldn't travel in the short term, people

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were banking

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up at once currency to save up for when they could. So I think redemption is

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incredibly important,

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right? And because if you want to see that pay off from the program, because

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otherwise people

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won't stick around for the long term. Exactly, amazing. I love the terminology

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you said,

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the hero's stay. That's great. I love that. And I just wanted to just, you may

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know this already,

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but in chapter 100, this isn't another bonus question, by the way. You've done

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your three questions.

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In chapter 100 of Blind Loyalty, we actually have 100 favorite loyalty programs

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, as mentioned on

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Let's Talk Loyalty, because you know, Paula Thomas always asks, and I have the

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privilege of being

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a guest host for her. We always ask the first question, like, what's your

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favorite loyalty program?

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And I don't know if you know this, you probably do know it and won't be

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surprised by it. But

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Mariette Bumvoise in the top 25 of loyalty professionals favorite loyalty

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program.

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Yeah, it's listed in that we have 100 and you're in the top 25. So I just

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thought I'd make sure

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you know that in case it's slipped past you. Well, it's a big, it's big and a

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tremendous team to

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get us to that point, right? We've got an amazing global team. And I mean, if

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you recall the history,

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right, we combine SPG and marriage rewards and red skull rewards and that was,

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I think it was

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a life changing experience for most of us doing that, right? Because we wanted

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to preserve the best

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bits of these programs and make them even better. And I think we've managed

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that, but we're still

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learning every day and improving. So it's good to hear. Yeah, it is a great

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story though, around

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these two gargantuan programs that you brought together. So when you said it

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was life changing,

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I wasn't sure if you were going to say from all the stress of having to manage

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it as well.

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It's probably a bit of both, right? Absolutely. Wonderful. So who would you

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like to tag to be in

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the hot seat for the next challenge? I've been around with my brains and you

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know, it's,

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I mean, there's so many tremendous professionals in the industry. I think since

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you've interviewed

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quite a few airline folks already and now you've got hotels. I think I maybe

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switch it up a little

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bit. Obviously, I can't nominate Najib again, but maybe we could look at rail.

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So I know Swen

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looks after loyalty for Deutsche Man in Germany. I think he would be a

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tremendous person to interview.

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I haven't told him this yet. Hopefully, hopefully he's going to be willing to

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do it, but I think

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he'd be great. That's amazing. Wonderful. Well, as I said, I think to you

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earlier, the beauty of

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what I'm doing with blind loyalty challenges, I get to meet amazing new loyalty

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professionals.

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So thank you for the nomination. Great. Well, you did say to me off recording

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that you're terribly

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nervous about something like this, but you've got absolutely no reason

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whatsoever to be nervous.

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Thank you so much. It was amazing. Thank you, Amanda. Appreciate it.