You can’t go into a store, restaurant or bar, book a flight or hotel anymore without being offered free membership of their guest loyalty program. My wallet is now so thick with loyalty cards that I walk at a 45 degree angle to the ground, but at least I know I’m building points everywhere I go!

We’re all suckers for a deal and a loyalty card offers us that promise. The more we spend, the more we save. I think that grocery stores and supermarkets have perfected the system: points added at checkout, and then the choice of redeeming them on future purchases. Simple and effective.

My wife and I are traveling to Italy in August for my sister’s wedding and because Mrs. Bar Blogger travels to China twice a year with her job she builds up a lot of air miles very quickly. We decided to try and use these points to book a hotel in Venice during our trip and the nice people at Sheraton couldn’t have been nicer. We were treated like full paying guests, no question about black out dates and nothing but helpfulness all round and two nights in Venice to boot! Woo hoo!

But the flip side has been more my normal experience. I have experienced bar and restaurant servers that have turned their noses up at the mere suggestion that I would pay with my loyalty card or redeem an appetizer or bottle of wine for my considerable past patronage.

I have had hotels try everything they could do to not honor their promises of hotel night redemption and I’ve even seen bar owners say “I’m sorry, we don’t run that program anymore!”

So my questions to you are: Do you run a loyalty program? and if so, have you established the guidelines that the business and the staff must follow to get the most out of it? Is your customer benefitting from your program?

Think about the following points when setting up your program:

1. How easy is it for your customer to participate?
2. How easy is it for you to keep track of points earned and redeemed?
3. How well trained are your staff in all aspects of your program?
4. Are your staff taught to behave exactly the same way when handed a loyalty card as if they were handed cash?
5. How much will it cost you to run your program?
6. What steps have you taken to make your customer feel wowed and preferred?
7. If you were a customer, would you feel loved or hated by your program?

I recently interviewed Finbarr Malone, an Irish Restaurateur who was so sick and tired of poorly performing loyalty programs for his restaurant and bar that he had a program written specifically for his business with all the elements he needed to make it work for him.

Finbarr has 4 businesses in the hospitality arena and therefore understands the difficulties of business ownership and what it takes to make them work.

During our conversation, Finbarr explained

* How to setup a loyalty program in your business that will pay for itself instantly

* What you should NEVER do when implementing a loyalty system in your business.

* How to avoid rewarding lower spending customers at the expense of your best customers

You can listen to that full 30 minute interview with Finbarr together with 100s of tools to help manage your food & beverage business in our Online Community Right Now by Clicking Here