Brand Keys (brandkeys.com), a leader in brand loyalty and emotional customer engagement, released their Silver Anniversary Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI). The 2022 survey – recognizing brands that have held the #1 spots for loyalty for a decade or more and Travel sector leaders – revealed a radically widening gap between customer expectations and brand delivery, as well as an extraordinarily more emotional consumer decision-making process.

Consumer Emotional And Expectation Inflation In Travel Sector

The survey found consumer behavior and loyalty now almost entirely governed by emotional values, which represent additional meaning to the customer beyond product function – how the product or service makes the customer feel, rather than what the product does. In 1997, the ratio between rational and emotional in the Travel category was 75:25. Consumers now put more emotional weight into their purchase decisions. The Travel sector is now 58:42 emotional to rational, with rational category values filed under “Primacy-of-Product” or “Price-of-Entry” by consumers.

Twenty-five years tracking brand loyalty makes it clear consumers do not settle for what exists. In the Travel sector the net increase since 1997 in consumer expectations for their Category Ideal has been 25%, noted Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder and president. “Travel sector brands have only kept up by 10%, leaving an awfully big gap between consumer desire and brand delivery.”

2022 Travel Sector Loyalty Winners
Travel sector brands that best met expectations and engaged consumers in 2022 included:

America’s Best Value Inn (Economy Hotels)
Curb (Taxi Hailing)
Delta (Airlines)
Drury (Midscale Hotels)
Lyft (Ride Share)
Ritz Carlton (Luxury Hotels)
Trip Advisor (Online Travel)
Via (Carpooling)

The following brands have been rated #1 for a decade or more:

Discover (Credit cards) – 25 years
Avis (Car Rental) – 23 years
Google (Search Engines) – 22 years
Netflix (Video streaming) – 20 years
Domino’s (Pizza) – 18 years
Dunkin’ (Out-of-Home Coffee) – 16 years
Konica Minolta (MFP Office Copiers) – 15 years
Hyundai (Automobiles) – 13 years
AT&T Wireless (Wireless) – 13 years
Amazon Kindle (E-Reader) – 12 years
Amazon.com (Retail: Online) – 11 years
Home Depot (Retail: Home Improvement) – 10 years