Businesses in today’s economy understand that keeping a satisfied existing customer is much more cost-effective than trying to attract new clients. Today’s consumers are in the process of right-sizing their expenditures, shopping during sales, discounting with coupons, as well as gathering points with host of reward programs. Whether its grocery shopping, big box retailers, hotels or airline travel, hunting for the best savings and when possible adding to loyalty, reward or cash-back programs seem to be key behavioral drivers.

With a renewed interest and attitude for saving, frequent flyer points are like bank accounts that can be tapped when appropriate and the credit can be spent as you like. Doubling of incentive points or triple coupons encourage economic stimulus actions by the masses.

According to a Reuters article by Chris Reiter from a few years ago, “Airlines have awarded more than 19 trillion frequent flyer miles over the past 25 years -- roughly equivalent to circling the globe 760 million times -- and more than 14 trillion of those miles are unredeemed.” And every year the numbers of loyal consumers and accumulated point balances continue to grow bigger and bigger. Consumer spending decisions are made based on membership in savings and loyalty programs, savings far greater than current utilization.
Repeat hotel patrons, car rental customers, grocery chains, and loyalty bonus schemes are now virtually mandatory for savvy consumers and seen as added-value toward personal assets.

Obviously, airlines, grocers and others with any type repeat customer reward programs are onto something. They are amassing a loyal (if not addictive) following, maintaining an ongoing dialogue with their core customers to make them feel special, and adding more far more options for a wider range of redemption options.

When economic stimulus for cities and our entire country is a survivalist reality, perhaps now is the time for airports to consider their own Airport Loyalty Programs. In my research thus far, I have found little written on this topic and identified just one airport, Toledo, that has an existing loyalty program in place in cooperation with a travel partner.

Establishing and maintaining a value-added program like this would take considerable resources and ongoing coordination, but would have significant benefits for any airport that embarks on such innovative differentiation. Imagine if local residents could earn points for every time they fly into or out of that airport, park at the regular local lots, make concession purchases at the terminal, visit nearly restaurants or city attractions, etc.