BookFlowGo: Why Airport Loyalty Doesn’t Start with Airlines

Airport loyalty is overcomplicated.

It is too often framed as an airline-style programme that demands heavy investment and years to deliver value. As a result, many airports talk about loyalty but never launch it.

That framing is wrong.

Airports don’t need a full-scale loyalty programme to start driving loyalty behaviour. They already own the smartest place to begin: Parking.

Parking Is the Loyalty Product Airports Overlook

If you strip loyalty back to first principles, it requires four things: data, frequency, value, and control.

Parking provides all four.

• It’s booked online, enabling direct customer registration.
• It’s airport-owned, avoiding third-party accrual complexity.
• It’s repeat-driven, not incidental.
• It’s one of the largest non-aeronautical revenue streams.

That combination makes parking the lowest-risk, highest-signal product airports have for testing loyalty and rewards.

Loyalty and Rewards Are Not the Same. And That’s the Point.

One of the biggest strategic mistakes airports make is treating loyalty and rewards as interchangeable.

• Rewards influence behaviour: product choice, timing, and yield.
• Loyalty builds preference: recognition, frequency, and long-term value.

Parking supports both, particularly when rewards are not applied uniformly but are targeted by product, date, or demand profile. This allows airports to push the right bookings, not just more bookings.

That isn’t discounting. It’s demand management.

The Commercial Proof Is Already There

We worked with one mature airport to deploy an integrated parking rewards model. It was a resounding success and achieved incredible results:

• Registered customers generated 117,000 bookings and US$8.6m in revenue.
• Generated on average 2.7 times more bookings
• Average booking value rose from $68.89 to $74.15.
• Customers redeeming rewards delivered the highest-value bookings at $75.69.
• Over 79 million points were earned, with redemption tightly controlled.

The takeaway is simple: customers who engage with rewards are more valuable, not less.

Where This Becomes More than Marketing

Here’s the part airports often miss.

When loyalty is embedded at the booking stage, it does more than drive repeat revenue. It improves operational decision-making.

Knowing who is coming, what they’ve booked, and why they matter allows airports to be better prepared on the day. Priority customers can be recognised. Service recovery becomes targeted rather than reactive. Operational teams are no longer blind to commercial intent.

This is where booking intelligence and operational readiness start to align, and where loyalty stops being a marketing programme and becomes a joined-up airport capability.

Final Thought

Airport loyalty doesn’t need to start with airlines. It does not need to be complex. And it doesn’t need to be expensive.

For many airports, the most powerful loyalty engine is already live, already booked online, and already owned.

Parking isn’t the entry point to loyalty. It’s the foundation.

About BookFlowGo

Drive more revenue from parking and ancillaries with BookFlowGo , the tailored airport solution for smarter bookings, seamless operations and standout customer experiences.

At BookFlowGo, we bring together the best in pre-booking, parking logistics and hardware innovation to help airports, cities and mobility hubs run smarter, more efficient parking operations.

We’re the power behind seamless parking. Whether it’s maximising revenue, optimising capacity or making parking effortless for travellers, we’ve got it covered. Our platform combines the expertise of Parkspace, ParkIT and Future Generation Services (FGS) to create a fully connected parking ecosystem that works better for operators and passengers alike.