How travel apps earn loyalty between trips
Why the months between holidays decide whether a travel app becomes part of someone’s routine or gets cleared out in the next storage purge.
Ask most people when they last opened their airline or holiday app and the answer will be tied to a trip: the evening they booked, the morning they checked in, the moment a delay notification came through. After that, the app goes quiet until the next one.
For many travel brands, that silence is expensive. Customers cost a lot to acquire, they buy infrequently, and an app that felt indispensable at the departure gate can sit unopened for six months. When the next trip comes round, the search starts on Google, Instagram or a comparison site instead.
Booking, check-in and in-trip tools get most of the investment because that is where transactions happen. The months between trips get far less attention, yet that is when a customer decides whether your brand is somewhere they come back to, or somewhere they booked once.
Why the gap between trips matters
UK adults took an average of 3.9 holidays in the year to summer 2024, according to ABTA, but only around 1.7 of those were abroad. For an airline or tour operator, even a loyal customer might make one or two purchases a year. Engagement data reflects that: travel apps keep only 18% of users the day after install, falling to 2.8% by day 30.
Apadmi’s Travel Apps Report 2026, shows how central apps have become to the trip itself. 53% of people have one or two travel apps installed, 38% carry three or four, and 28% say they probably couldn’t go on holiday without one. Yet 28% have deleted a travel app after a poor experience.
That combination of high dependence during a trip and low presence outside it is the core problem. The customer values the app at the airport, then has little reason to keep it on their home screen. Every month it sits unused, it competes for space with apps they open daily, and the brand loses its direct line to them. The encouraging part is that many of the features people say keep them loyal can be delivered outside the trip.
Give the next trip somewhere to start
Travel is one of the few categories where people enjoy planning almost as much as buying. They browse destinations months ahead, compare dates and talk options through with whoever they’re travelling with. Most of that happens on social media, search engines and comparison sites rather than in a brand’s own app.
There’s a clear commercial reason to change that. 24% of respondents say travel apps make them more likely to book a spontaneous trip. The app already on the phone, with saved traveller details and a payment method attached, is best placed to capture that impulse.
In practice, that means giving early intent somewhere to live:
Done well, the app becomes the place where the next trip is first imagined, instead of where it gets booked after the decision was made somewhere else.
Make loyalty status visible every month
Loyalty is the most obvious reason to open a travel app between trips, yet many programmes only surface a points balance at checkout. Asked which loyalty features appeal most, respondents put discounts and cashback first (28%), followed by collecting points or miles for bookings (18.3%).
Both work harder when customers can see progress. Showing how close someone is to their next reward or tier, what their points could buy today and when they expire turns a static number into a reason to check in. Micro-redemptions help too: spending points on seat selection, a lounge pass or priority boarding means progress feels real on every trip, not only after years of saving.
Partnerships extend this further as one of the most practical ways to keep customers earning between trips. Points on dining, car hire, insurance or everyday spend keep the programme, and the app, in regular use. For hotel groups and holiday-let brands without a points scheme, an account view that remembers past stays, saved guests and room preferences can do a similar job.
Use surprise perks and upgrades with intent
More than 1 in 4 respondents chose exclusive upgrades or priority access or surprise perks as the loyalty features that appeal to them most. Early boarding, a late checkout or a free transfer usually cost less than a blanket discount and are remembered for much longer.
The app is the best channel for them because it knows who the customer is and when something meaningful has happened. Moments worth triggering on include:
Timing matters as much as the perk; a message in February telling a regular guest that their favourite room type is free for their usual summer week, with late checkout included, gives them a reason to book direct before they’ve started comparing prices elsewhere. The same perk offered at check-in is pleasant, but it doesn’t influence where the next booking goes.
Close the loop after the trip
The days after someone gets home are the most underused moment in travel. The customer has just had the experience, they’re sorting photos and telling friends about it, and most brands send a generic survey email, if they send anything at all.
Reviews carry real commercial weight. Positive reviews and ratings were joint top, alongside brand reputation, among the things respondents value most when deciding whether to download and trust a travel app. An in-app prompt a day or two after return, tied to the specific flight, hotel or excursion, will produce more useful reviews than an email weeks later. Responding visibly and highlighting verified stays then makes those reviews work for the next customer.
The post-trip window is also where unresolved problems either get fixed or turn into resentment. Poor customer service accounted for 17.1% of uninstalls. If a flight was delayed, a refund is pending or a compensation claim is open, the app should show its status clearly so the customer never has to chase it. Handled well, a frustrating end to a holiday becomes a reason to trust the brand next time.
Once everything is settled, a simple trip summary with points earned, the shared itinerary and a prompt to save ideas for next year brings the customer back to where the cycle starts: planning.
Where AI fits in
AI trip assistants were the emerging technology respondents were most interested in, with 36.2% saying they could improve their travel experience. Most of the conversation focuses on in-trip use, such as re-planning around a cancellation or telling someone to leave now for their train.
An assistant that knows a customer’s past trips, budget, travel party and preferences can suggest next year’s holiday in a way a static destination page can’t. It can pull booking confirmations from email into one tidy view, point out that a customer’s points now cover most of a short-haul return, or flag a price drop on a saved route. Further out, the report points to personalised trip models built around each traveller’s budget, pace, accessibility needs and preferred neighbourhoods.
None of this works without connected data. An assistant that can’t see loyalty status, past stays or open service cases will give generic answers, however fluent they sound. The work is the same as for every point above: a single view of the customer that the app can act on.
Where to start
A useful exercise for digital and loyalty teams is to open your own app as a customer would the week after they get home, then again three months later. What does it show them? Is there anything new since their last trip, anything that reflects who they are, and any reason to open it again next month?
In many cases the answer is a home screen still built around a booking that has already happened. A handful of changes tend to make the biggest difference:
1. Show loyalty progress and the next achievable reward on the home screen, not only at checkout.
2. Let customers save destinations, dates and price alerts, with total prices shown upfront.
3. Trigger a review prompt and trip summary within a few days of return.
4. Keep open refunds, claims and service cases visible until they’re resolved.
5. Launch two or three milestone perks with clear triggers, and test them against a control group.
The metric to track is repeat direct bookings from customers who used the app between trips, compared with those who didn’t. That number shows whether the time between holidays is building loyalty or quietly handing the next booking to someone else.
Travel Apps Report 2026
Learn what your customer wants and needs from a travel app in 2026. From AI assistants to surprise perks and upgrades, this report uncovers what users value most.