There was a time, not all that long ago, when loyalty in travel meant something rather straightforward. You picked an airline, stuck with a hotel group, collected your points with the quiet discipline of a Sunday stamp collector, and eventually treated yourself to an upgrade that felt richly deserved.
Those days, it seems, are drifting gently into the contrails.
Fresh research from Phocuswright suggests modern travellers are not abandoning loyalty programs, far from it, but they are approaching them with the tactical precision of a seasoned chess player. According to the company’s latest consumer studies, a remarkable 84 per cent of leisure travellers admitted to “gaming” at least one loyalty scheme in the past year.
Not cheating, mind you. Just… playing smart.
You can explore the research here: https://www.phocuswright.com.
What emerges is less a story about disloyal customers and more a story about highly educated consumers who understand exactly how the system works and intend to make it work for them.
Loyalty, but on their terms
Travel companies have long treated loyalty participation as a proxy for devotion. Sign-ups were celebrated, elite tiers admired, and repeat bookings viewed as evidence of emotional connection.
Phocuswright’s findings politely dismantle that assumption.
Across airlines, hotels and online travel agencies, between 57 and 68 per cent of travellers who claim a preferred brand still booked elsewhere within the past year. Even status holders, supposedly the industry’s safest harbour, proved perfectly willing to drift when a sharper fare or better timetable appeared on the horizon.
It is less betrayal than pragmatism.
As Madeline List, Manager of Research & Special Projects at Phocuswright, neatly put it:
“When we talk about loyalty in travel, the conversation often gets reduced to points and miles, but that misses the bigger picture. Travellers are highly engaged with these programs and they are gaming them in very intentional ways, yet engagement alone does not equal loyalty. True loyalty is the result of consistently delivering value, reliable experiences and fair pricing over time.”
In other words, run a tight ship, and passengers will return. Run a sloppy one, and no quantity of bonus miles will save you.
The rise of the calculating traveller
Some of the behaviour uncovered is quietly astonishing.
One in five airline loyalty members took flights they otherwise would not have boarded simply to preserve status. Meanwhile, one in four hotel members checked into properties they might normally have bypassed for exactly the same reason.
Then there is the financial gymnastics.
Nearly four in ten travellers purchased gift cards purely to harvest points. Over a quarter opened credit cards with the welcome bonus firmly in mind and little intention of lingering once it arrived. A smaller but determined cohort even admitted to manufacturing spend by buying goods for others.
Your grandparents collected teaspoons. Today’s travellers collect arbitrage opportunities.
Programs don’t create loyalty; good businesses do
One of the more refreshing conclusions from the research is that the fundamentals still matter most.
In Playing Favourites: What Makes a Go-To Brand in Travel, and Why Do Customers Stray?, travellers ranked value for money, pricing fairness, reliability and simplicity above loyalty perks when choosing providers.
Which will surprise absolutely no hotelier who has spent a lifetime smoothing check-ins or chasing housekeeping.
Points, it seems, are an amplifier, not a rescue device.
Budgets tighten, points get serious
Economic gravity is also reshaping behaviour. Travellers are leaning harder on redemptions to stretch their budgets, upgrade experiences, and occasionally justify trips that might otherwise remain pleasant daydreams.
Intriguingly, half of those redeeming points were visiting somewhere entirely new, highlighting how flexible rewards can quietly redirect global travel flows.
Destinations take note: loyalty currency is becoming a marketing channel in its own right.
Youth leads the shift
If older travellers once equated loyalty with reassurance, younger cohorts see variety as part of the journey itself.
Roughly half of Gen Z and millennial travellers say using the same brand repeatedly matters less than trying something different. Novelty is not dissatisfaction; it is discovery.
The list reinforced the point:
“If there’s one thing I would emphasize, it’s that loyalty is not the product of an interaction with a program. It’s the totality of all brand interactions over the customer lifetime. Points and perks can reinforce that relationship, but without strong product quality, fair pricing and experiences that work well, there’s no reason to expect a loyalty program to move behavior in a meaningful way.”
Seasoned operators might translate that more simply: earn trust first; reward it second.
A gentle wake-up call for the industry
Taken together across Getting With the Program, Beyond Points, and related studies, the message is not one of crisis but recalibration.
Travellers still value loyalty schemes. They still chase status. They still enjoy the occasional lounge Chardonnay.
But allegiance today is conditional, rational and refreshingly unsentimental.
For travel brands, the prescription is hardly revolutionary:
Deliver consistently.
Price fairly.
Respect the customer’s time.
Do that, and loyalty tends to follow without needing to be coaxed.
Because in the end, as the best hoteliers have always understood, loyalty is not bought with points.
It is earned through experience.
And that, reassuringly, is how it has always been.
by My Thanh Pham – (c) 2026.
Read Time: 4 minutes.
About the Writer.
My Thanh Pham has led a more travel-intensive life than most people. After studying tourism, she went straight into the work of building journeys across South-East Asia, temples, beaches, night trains, and all, quietly fixing the messy bits so others could enjoy the ride.
She was never meant to stay behind a desk. Airline life followed, dividing her days between reservations and the airport floor, right where travel shows its true colours. Missed flights, tight hugs, frayed tempers, sudden joy, she saw it all, close up.
Now at Global Travel Media, My Thanh has traded ticket stubs for a keyboard. She writes the way she once worked: steady, clear-eyed and respectful of the road’s unpredictable rhythm, guiding readers through a world she knows from the inside.
