Sample: 2,000 UK adults (18+), nationally representative, fielded 1–3 July 2026.
The core problem: loyalty programmes are underdelivering on their name
Only 37% of consumers surveyed belong to any travel or hospitality loyalty programme, and even among members, rewards rarely drive repeat behaviour — just 22% say rewards “always” or “often” influence whether they rebook. Worse, 44%¹ agree that “collecting points feels less valuable than it did five years ago,” driven mainly by slow accumulation (51%) and perceived devaluation (38%²).
For a CMO, this is a retention-economics problem: the mechanism built to reduce reliance on price competition is instead reinforcing it.
45% say the deciding factor between two otherwise-equal brands would be immediate benefits like discounts or upgrades, versus just 17% who’d be swayed by points — meaning most programmes are currently optimised for the wrong lever.
There’s also a churn signal: 21% have actively stopped collecting points somewhere, most commonly because rewards took too long to earn (37%) or weren’t valuable enough (32%). That’s a quantifiable pool of lapsed participants who were once willing to engage and were let down by programme design, not lack of interest.
The bigger opportunity: nobody owns “best in class” yet
Asked which brand has the most rewarding loyalty programme, 46% said “unsure” — almost double the top named brand (Booking.com, 25%). This is wide open, category-level white space: no single travel or hospitality brand has established a clear reputational lead on loyalty value, which means the prize for actually solving the reward-fatigue problem is differentiation, not just retention. It also means brand marketing and loyalty marketing need to work harder together because right now, even engaged spenders can’t name a standout.
The clearest lever for winning that space is personalisation: 66%³ would spend more with a brand if the programme felt more tailored to them, and 61%¹ agree that brands who visibly adapt to changing customer expectations earn more loyalty. But there’s a substantial expectation-delivery gap: only 38%¹ feel the brands they book with most frequently actually recognise and appreciate their loyalty, a 23-point shortfall against stated expectations. Closing that gap is likely to move both spend and advocacy.
Communication is a silent leak in the funnel
Only 37% think brands communicate loyalty benefits clearly, and 36% think they do so in a timely way, with roughly 4 in 10 simply “unsure” on both. This is a lower-cost fix than redesigning the reward economics, and it’s likely suppressing programme value that already exists but isn’t landing.
Before CMOs invest in richer rewards, there’s a real question of whether current rewards are even being communicated well enough to register.
Segment priorities: where the response is highly uneven
Age is the single sharpest predictor of engagement, and it runs counter to some conventional wisdom.
Membership shrinks dramatically from 59% at 18-24 to 23% at 55+, and brand awareness follows the same slope (63% of 55+ can’t name a rewarding programme, vs 25% of 18-24s) — signalling that older, often higher-spending travellers are being left cold by current loyalty propositions rather than being naturally loyal to legacy points schemes. Counterintuitively, it’s the youngest cohort that’s most receptive to a traditional points model (31% would choose points over immediate benefit and most motivated by personalisation and exclusivity (17% vs 3% for 55+ on personalised experiences). The 25-44 bracket is where recognition and willingness-to-spend-more peak (47-49% feel recognised, 69-73% would spend more for tailoring) — this is the highest-value segment to protect and reward now, before habits calcify. Older audiences (55+) respond better to straightforward, tangible perks (upgrades, free extras) than to points mechanics or personalisation messaging.
What this suggests for strategy
The data points toward three priorities in rank order of likely impact-to-effort: first, rebalance reward mix toward immediate, redeemable value rather than long-horizon point accumulation, since that’s what’s actually driving switching behaviour across nearly every segment; second, fix communication clarity and timeliness before investing further in reward richness, since a meaningful share of dissatisfaction may be a messaging failure rather than a product failure; third, treat 25-44 as the loyalty core to protect with personalisation investment, while using simpler, tangible-perk messaging to re-engage the 55+ segment that current programmes are visibly failing to reach.
The research was conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 2000 UK Respondents (Nat Rep 18+). The data was collected between 01.07.2026 – 03.07.2026. Censuswide is a member of the Market Research Society (MRS) and the British Polling Council (BPC), and a signatory of the Global Data Quality Pledge. We adhere to the MRS Code of Conduct and ESOMAR principles
¹ Combines ‘Strongly agree’ and ‘Somewhat agree’
² Those who agree that collecting points feels less valuable to them than it did five years ago
³ Combines ‘Yes, definitely’ and ‘Yes, possibly’
