The USD 10 Airport shuttle ride. And What It Taught Me About Loyalty Tiers.
(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers the “Retailer’s focus towards Consumer Loyalty”)
The airport shuttle from Boston Logan to my hotel was a shared one.
A van, rather than a cab. And at the wheel was a lady driver who, without being asked, helped me load three weeks’ worth of luggage into the back — heavy bags, packed for a long working stay — with the kind of quiet efficiency that makes you feel looked after before you’ve even sat down.
The exterior of the vehicle carried the branding of Holiday Inn — clean, recognisable, the unmistakeable IHG logo doing exactly what logos are supposed to do.
Inside, already seated, was a couple. First-time visitors to Boston, though they had lived in the US for over two and a half decades — originally from Dallas, Texas. Warm, curious, easy to talk to. We fell into conversation almost immediately.
And then came a moment of mild confusion.
I explained to the couple that the shuttle served both hotels as part of a shared airport transfer arrangement — a practical, cost-efficient solution for properties in close proximity.
What stayed with me, though, was not the logistics. It was the pricing.
USD 10. For both.
The Marriott guests and I paid an identical flat fare, rode in the same vehicle, loaded bags in the same hold, and were dropped at adjacent lobbies within minutes of each other.
The Marriott couple had chosen premium — a globally trusted brand, a higher nightly rate, and the reasonable expectation that a more expensive stay would reflect itself in the quality of every associated touchpoint.
I had made a different, deliberate call. Value-driven. Functional. Perfectly suited to a three-week working visit for a senior leadership programme.
But the shuttle made no such distinction.
And as I dragged my bags through the Holiday Inn lobby that evening, my mind — as it almost always does — travelled home.
To Indian retail. To our loyalty programmes. To the elaborate tier architectures we have built, named with such aspiration, and then quietly failed to bring to life on the shop floor.
Shoppers Stop’s First Citizen Club runs across five named tiers — Classic Moments, Silver Edge, Golden Glow, Platinum, and Black — each defined by escalating annual spend thresholds. Pantaloons segments its Green Card membership by spend. Lifestyle’s Inner Circle moves loyalists deliberately through Silver, Gold, and Platinum designations.
The nomenclature is aspirational. The investment in building these structures — the CRM systems, the points engines, the tier communication — is real, recurring, and significant.
And yet.
The Platinum First Citizen member frequently stands in the same billing queue as the Classic Moments enrollee. The Golden Glow loyalist receives the same carry bag, the same counter engagement, the same fifteen-second farewell as the walk-in customer who signed up at the door twenty minutes earlier.
The tier lives in the database. It rarely survives the journey to the shop floor.
The Dallas couple and I paid the same ten dollars. The shuttle, to its credit, never pretended otherwise. It was a logistics vehicle with a flat fare structure and no aspiration to be anything more.
A retail brand’s Platinum member, however, has been explicitly promised something more.
The more important question — the one that stayed with me long after I had unpacked and settled into my room — is whether our stores are actually delivering it.
(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims.)
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9 here.
