As American sales guru and author Jeffrey Gitomer once said – "customer satisfaction is worthless; customer loyalty is priceless".

As travel brands compete for every booking in a rapidly evolving and increasingly fragmented market, with margins squeezed on all sides, it’s no longer enough for customers to come away from their interaction with you or your brand simply happy.

You have to ensure that next time they need the product or service you’re selling, you’re their first choice – and are brand they want to recommend to others.

When your customer is the travel agent who’s selling your holidays on your behalf, as it is for Titan Travel, then that loyalty is hard won and easily lost – and requires constant attention to maintain.

This is particularly true in 2025 now consumers have rediscovered the skills and knowledge agents have, and rightly value the positive benefits they bring to every phase of the customer journey.

As trusted intermediaries with unique skill sets, agents know they offer a service for which people are willing to pay – especially when it comes to complex itineraries – and plenty there are plenty of studies to support the hypothesis they generally deliver higher-margin bookings than those made direct.

So a good agent is worth their weight in gold. The challenge for a brand like ours, Titan Travel, is how we become – and remain – their first and lasting choice when competition is so fierce.

Paying a fair level of commission on the bookings they make is, of course, the first and most important tool, and we’re confident we do that. But beyond that purely transactional dynamic, travel is – and always will be – a relationships industry. Recognising the loyalty at the heart of those relationships, beyond the simple act of selling, is the cement that holds them together.

Investing in, and continually improving on, a well-crafted and personalised rewards strategy as complement to – and never a substitute for – a fair commission structure can therefore be the crucial factor in fostering the kind of long-term loyalty that ensures it’s your brand that’s consistently championed.

At Titan, we believe a good rewards strategy does more than just offer perks. Alongside our other unique selling points, such as a nationwide airport chauffeur service included as standard in every holiday, our Happiness Guarantee, and decades of expertise, our strategy nurtures loyalty by showing our agent partners we value them, and motivates them by providing another reason to choose us.

That’s the reason we’ve recently refreshed ours to ensure it aligns to our "Year of More" strategy, with a guaranteed cash incentive for every booking made, plus the chance for agents to spin the "winning wheel" to boost their earnings by up to £250.

We believe there’s more to a lasting partnership than commission, so whether its tickets to see Oasis or vouchers agents can redeem with more than 200 restaurants and retailers, we’re determined to reward their loyalty by giving them more in response – and freedom to choose what that reward looks like.

Jeffrey Gitomer also once said "you don’t earn loyalty in a day – you earn loyalty day-by-day". Regardless of the tactics you use, the need to recognise that loyalty is built over time and needs to be carefully nurtured on an ongoing basis.

If you want to use your rewards strategy as a means to create a meaningful partnership that translates into affinity for your brand in an era of endless choice, and a higher life-time value from the agent, then treat it as more than a simple retention tool. Make it a central pillar of your trade strategy, because the brands which reward well win.

Shane Lewis-Riley is Titan Travel’s director of trade distribution.