Every operator I have spoken to this autumn says a version of the same thing. Guests are still coming in, but they are coming in a little less often, spending a little less when they do, and thinking harder before they book. Nobody is panicking. Everybody is watching the numbers more closely than they were a year ago.
This is the climate that loyalty programmes were built for, and it is also the climate in which they are most often misunderstood. So I want to set out how I think about loyalty when wallets are tight, and what I would be doing this week if I were running a group of venues.
Every visit matters more
When footfall is growing, a lost guest is replaced by the next one through the door. When it is flat or falling, a lost guest is simply lost. The maths of retention changes. The regular who comes in on an ordinary Tuesday is now worth more to you than the walk-in who may never come back, because the regular is the one keeping the shift viable.
What we see across the programmes we run is consistent. Members are far more likely to return than non-members, and that gap widens rather than narrows when guests are cutting back. People trim the venues they feel nothing for. They keep the ones where they are known, where there is something waiting for them, where the visit feels like it counts towards something. A loyalty programme is a way of making sure your venue is in the second group.
Personalisation feels different when money is tight
In a good year a generic 10% off is a nice gesture. In a careful year it is noise. What lands is the offer that shows you were paying attention: the dish they always order, the time of week they normally visit, a reward that arrives at the point they were weighing up whether to go out at all.
The data to do this already exists in most groups. It sits in the POS, the booking system and the membership database, usually in three places that do not talk to each other. The work is joining it up and then using it with some restraint. Fewer messages, better aimed. A guest who feels looked after will forgive a lot. A guest who feels marketed at will leave the programme and quietly take their visits with them.
Stability is a valid goal
There is a habit in our industry of judging loyalty by growth. New members, new sign-ups, a bigger database. In a cost-conscious climate I would argue for a different measure. How many of your members who visited last quarter visited this quarter? How many of your top spenders are still your top spenders? Did the programme hold the base steady while the market softened around it?
Holding steady is not a failure. For a lot of operators right now it is the win. A programme that keeps your regulars regular is doing its job, even if the headline numbers are not moving.
What I would do this week
- Pull a list of members who visited in the spring and have not visited since. Not to blast them, but to look at them. Who are they, where did they go, what did they used to order?
- Pick one small, specific gesture for that group. A favourite dish on the house, a table at the time they used to come. Send it to a few hundred people and watch what happens.
- Ask the floor team which regulars they have not seen lately. They will know before any dashboard does.
None of that needs a new platform or a new budget. It needs someone to decide that the guests you already have are the priority, and to act like it.
Loyalty in a downturn is less about buying new visits and more about not losing the ones you were already getting. That is a less exciting story than growth. It is also, right now, the one that keeps the lights on.
If any of this is relevant to your estate, get in touch. There is more writing here, and the studio behind the work is TheLoyaltyCo.