Loyalty programs don’t create loyalty. Conversations do.
Here’s what I’m seeing emerge:
🔹 The Shift
Traditional approach:
Deploy a loyalty program → Hope guests engage → Try to understand preferences
The new paradigm:
Engage in conversation → Build enriched guest profiles → Earn loyalty organically
This is where the *Conversational Engineer* role becomes critical.
🔹 What Changes
Instead of designing reward tiers, Conversational Engineers architect the ongoing dialogue between property and guest:
→ They map conversation touchpoints across the entire guest journey → They design systems that progressively learn what matters to each guestÂ
→ They ensure every interaction adds value to the relationship, not just noise to the inbox → They build the enriched profiles that make personalization actually personal
🔹 Why This Matters Now
With agentic AI, we can finally have meaningful conversations at scale. But scale without strategy is just noise.
The Conversational Engineer ensures those AI-powered conversations:
→ Feel human and contextual
→ Build relationships, not just complete transactions
→ Create the foundation that makes formal loyalty programs worth deploying
🔹 The Truth About Loyalty Programs
A loyalty program should be the result of understanding your guests deeply, not the method for doing so.
You earn the right to formalize VIP treatment only after you’ve done the hard work of genuine relationship-building through conversation.
Small boutique hotels have always known this, they recognize their regulars because they’ve had countless conversations. The Conversational Engineer brings this intimate approach to properties of any size.