In February I wrote that we were in the final stages of something significant with AlphaMind Group and could not say what. Now I can. The Mindset loyalty app is live in the UAE, and it is the piece of work I hinted at then: the biggest we have built together in three years of partnership.
What Mindset is
AlphaMind operates some of the most recognisable venues in Dubai. Clap, with its rooftop and its show. Bar du Port on the water. Iris, high above the city. Each has its own crowd, its own rhythm, its own idea of a good night. What they share is a group of people who love them and who, until now, were treated as strangers every time they moved from one to the next.
Mindset is the bridge. One membership, one app, one identity across the venues. A guest who has dinner at Clap on Thursday and drinks at Bar du Port on Saturday is recognised as the same person, rewarded for both, and spoken to as someone the group knows rather than someone the venue has just met.
The mechanics are built around AED balances. Members earn value in dirhams, not abstract points they have to convert in their heads, and spend it across any venue in the group. On top of that sit exclusive rewards that are specific to the venues: the kind of access and experiences that money alone does not buy, which in a city like Dubai is the currency that actually matters.
What it took to build
The app sits on top of a stack of systems that were never designed to talk to each other. MICROS at the point of sale, SevenRooms for reservations, Liana Technologies for the communication layer, and our own loyalty engine in the middle joining them up. Every transaction, every booking and every message now feeds one view of the guest.
That integration work is most of the past year. It is not glamorous. It involves sandboxes, edge cases, a reservation that was modified three times, a bill split across four cards, a member who signed up twice with different emails. The floor team never sees any of it, which is the point. What they see is a name and a balance on the screen when the guest arrives.
The design brief was harder than usual. AlphaMind’s venues are premium, and the app had to feel like it belonged to them. We spent a long time on the small things: the way a reward appears, the language of a notification, how it feels to open the app in a dark rooftop bar rather than in daylight.
Loyalty as a lifestyle
The name is deliberate. Mindset is not a points card. It is an invitation to be part of the group’s world, to be the kind of person who is known at Clap and expected at Iris. For a group whose venues are as much about belonging as about food and drink, the programme has to carry that same feeling. Transactional loyalty would have been cheaper to build and would have undermined everything the venues stand for.
Launch
There is a welcome bonus for new downloads, which is the right way to open a programme like this: a reason to join now, and a balance to spend on the first visit. The teams have been trained in every venue. The regulars have been told first, because they should be.
If you are in Dubai, download Mindset, go to one of the venues, and see what being known feels like. If you are an operator with a portfolio of distinct brands and a wish to connect them without flattening them, this is the model, and we are happy to talk about it.
Thank you to AlphaMind for three years of trust and a brief that pushed us. And to the TLC team, in Dubai and Manchester, who built it. This one was a long time coming and it was worth it.
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.