Loyalty is not built by points programmes alone. How hospitality and service businesses in Saudi Arabia can design experiences guests remember and return for.
Saudi Arabia welcomed about 116 million tourists in 2024, 29.7 million from abroad and 86.2 million domestic trips, according to Ministry of Tourism figures reported by Arab News. The stated goal is 150 million visits a year by 2030. As the market grows, guests get more choice, and the question that matters for hotels, restaurants and event organizers becomes: why would this guest come back to us?
The easy answer is a loyalty programme with points and discounts. Those tools help, but they do not create loyalty on their own, because a competitor can offer more points tomorrow. What is hard to copy is an experience guests remember because it understood them.
Guests Remember Moments, Not the Whole Stay
Research by psychologist Daniel Kahneman and colleagues, starting in 1993, showed that people do not judge an experience by the average of its moments. Their judgement is shaped by its most intense moment and by how it ends, known as the peak-end rule. A guest who had three comfortable nights may leave with a poor impression if check-out stalls and the bill takes too long. Another who had a problem on arrival may leave happy because a staff member solved it gracefully and added a touch they did not expect.
So it is not enough for every step to be acceptable. Find the moments where judgement forms: the first arrival, the first problem, the departure, the message that arrives after the guest is home. Then design them on purpose.
Experience also drives buying decisions directly. According to PwC research, 73 percent of consumers say customer experience is an important factor in their purchasing decisions, and 80 percent name speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendly service as its most important elements. None of those comes from a points programme.
The moments guests remember are usually created by a person, not an app.
What Frontline Staff Need
The moments guests remember are usually created by a person, not an app. Designing the experience includes designing what that person needs to do the job:
Authority to decide. A receptionist who needs a manager's approval to compensate a guest for a small mistake will lose a moment that could have become a good memory. Define what staff can resolve on their own, and up to what limit.
Information at the right time. If a guest tells the hotel in the app that their child has a food allergy, the restaurant team should know at breakfast without asking.
Consistent channels. Guests do not distinguish between WhatsApp, the front desk and the app; to them it is one place. A request made in one channel should never have to be explained again in another.
Recovering from mistakes. Mistakes will happen. What separates one business from another is how quickly it owns the mistake, how sincerely it apologizes and how clearly it fixes it.
Personalize With Trust, Measure Honestly
Guests expect a business to remember their preferences: the room type, the favourite table, prayer times in an event schedule. But personalization runs on personal data, and in Saudi Arabia that is governed by the Personal Data Protection Law. The law came into force in September 2023 and became fully enforceable in September 2024 at the end of its grace period, as Clyde & Co explains. Ask only for what you need, explain why you need it, and let guests see and change what you keep.
Measurement should go beyond the satisfaction survey at check-out. Track the share of guests who return within a year, the number of requests that took more than one contact to resolve, and the complaints solved on the spot. Those numbers tell you whether the experience is building loyalty.
Start by mapping the full guest journey, from search and booking to after departure, and mark its peaks and its ending. That is at the heart of our customer experience work: turning loyalty from a points programme into an experience worth returning for.
