Airline Loyalty Schemes: What value do travelers see in them?
In 2025, Amadeus surveyed 9,500 travelers across seven markets to create the Connected Journeys thought leadership report. In this piece, contributing editor Martin Cowen, takes a fresh look at traveler loyalty using unpublished Amadeus data as well as research from leading industry sources.
Loyalty and loyalty schemes are as embedded into the airline industry as a Passenger Name Record (PNR) reference in an EDIFACT booking. But unlike the PNR, which IATA is hoping to offer-and-order out of existence in the next five years, loyalty and loyalty schemes are not going away any time soon.
Neither, I fear, is the conflation between the two.
“Loyalty” is an abstract philosophical concept, emotive, personal and human; a “loyalty scheme” is a concrete sales and marketing tool, a source of data, a customer acquisition and retention channel, a profit center.
The industry’s party line has always been that if I get travelers to sign up to my loyalty scheme (or take out a co-branded credit card), then they become a loyal customer. Perhaps this was true in the golden age of air travel – whatever that was – but today’s travelers have a wider choice of airlines, flying to more destinations, with easier access to and awareness of the alternatives.
With so many options to choose from, it’s becoming clear that loyalty scheme membership is no guarantee of loyalty.
What is the take-up of loyalty schemes in travel?
Research carried out for Amadeus’ Connected Journeys white paper found 35% of global respondents said that subscribing to a loyalty program means they tend to book with one particular supplier. In this case, the correlation between loyalty – evidenced by an actual booking - and being a member of the loyalty scheme is proven.
But for others, the connection is more tenuous. Raw data which didn’t make the final cut of Connected Journeys showed that 28% of loyalty scheme subscribers book with a variety of operators, breaking the connection between loyalty and loyalty scheme membership.
It is also of note that 22% of leisure travelers are not signed up for any loyalty scheme, with a surprisingly high number of respondents from the UK (41%) and France (40%) not getting involved. This contrast with only 6% of Indian and 8% of Chinese travelers who are not signed up to a scheme.
This could be seen as a sign that travelers in the UK and France aren’t as interested in the loyalty schemes as the industry likes to think. Or alternatively, that there is still a significant addressable audience in mature markets of unaligned travelers ripe for conversion to a loyalty scheme member.
Do loyal customers really need a scheme to get them to book?
Travelers become loyal to a brand for many reasons. Connected Journeys talks about “the personal need to feel understood, appreciated and valued”, feelings which brands can and should aspire to deliver, independent of a loyalty scheme.
But airline loyalty schemes mean these emotional drivers can be made tangible and manifested in the form of priority boarding and check-in, lounge access, upgrades, free refreshments and more. The Connected Journeys data shows that around one-in-four members expect these benefits, which begs the question, what do the others expect to get out of their membership?
Phocuswright research drilled down into this disconnect by asking travelers about their “go-to brand”, a synonym for a brand that travelers are loyal to. “Loyalty programs matter, but they rarely lead,” it said. Across airlines, hotels and OTAs, loyalty schemes came sixth, fourth and fifth respectively as the reason that travelers give a brand “go-to” status. The main factor, for all three, was nothing more complicated than good value for money. Loyalty is about value, not points.
Is AI pricing going to sound the death knell for loyalty schemes?
There’s an AI angle to everything in life and travel – loyalty and loyalty schemes are no exception. Skift looked at the connection between agentic AI and loyalty as part of its Global Travel Insights 2026 report. It found that travelers with a brand preference will switch if an AI assistant can surface a better deal with a different supplier.
Skift respondents from India emerged as the least loyal - 71% are very likely or likely to switch to a better deal, an interesting stat when the Connected Journeys data show that Indian travelers are the most likely to be enrolled in a membership scheme.
On a podcast discussing the report, Skift’s head of research Seth Borko said: “There is a large chunk of travelers out there who currently have a brand preference and are currently loyal to a brand, but who could be influenced by AI…”
However much the qualitative and quantitative data suggests a disconnect between loyalty and loyalty schemes, the fact remains that for airlines in particular loyalty revenues are significant, particularly for big American carriers such as American, Delta and United.
These airlines also have a financially-rewarding relationship with the established credit card providers. Challenger banks and fintech startups are looking at ways to get into the travel loyalty scheme space, potentially rewriting the loyalty playbook from the traveler’s perspective.
What is the relationship between trust and loyalty?
Loyalty is something that many travel suppliers aspire to, a cohort of repeat customers who will not only choose their brand over others but also help with advocacy and promotion, acquiring new customers on its behalf. Loyalty can be price-driven (as per Phocuswright) but it is also vulnerable to pricing (as per Skift).
Trust is an important aspect of loyalty, and many of the current conversations around AI in travel are starting to look at the issue of trust. So perhaps we could see a situation where travelers will ultimately become loyal to a trusted agentic AI, particularly when assistants become capable of not only surfacing brand-agnostic hyper-personalized recommendations but also taking these responses through to booking, then on to delivery.
Until then, some travelers will continue to sign up for loyalty schemes without actually being loyal to the brand; other travelers will be loyal to a brand without being a member. Some brands will prioritize loyalty schemes because of the revenues, other brands will look at loyalty-driven revenues through a lens of product and service, not points.
The relationship between loyalty and loyalty schemes is becoming increasingly complicated. The revenues from loyalty schemes mean that points, statuses, tiers and redemptions will continue to take up a lot of C-suite bandwidth. But this should not come at the expense of what drives loyalty in the first place - value for money, trust, service and experience.
Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are solely of contributing editor, Martin Cowen, and do not necessarily express the views of Amadeus.
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