Somewhere in your program right now is a branded travel mug priced at 4,000 points. It has been there since launch. Nobody has redeemed it since launch.
Most points catalogs are less a rewards store than a storage unit. Gift cards, drinkware, a Bluetooth speaker from a brand nobody recognizes. Members browse once, do the math, and close the tab.
Meanwhile the thing they actually want to spend loyalty points on isn't in the catalog at all.
Expedia Group's Traveler Value Index 2025, based on 11,000 respondents across 11 markets, found that travel is "the top category consumers are interested in redeeming loyalty points for.” 83% expressed interest, against 40% for gift cards or cashback. It isn't close, and it hasn't been close for a while.
When Expedia Group asked consumers what they want to redeem against, the ranking wasn't a photo finish. Travel came in at 83%. Gift cards or cashback took 40%. Merchandise and retail, 30%. Statement credit, 26%. Charitable contributions, 14%.2
Travel points redemption sits at roughly double the interest of the next category down, and the next category down is the one most non-travel programs have built their entire catalog around.
Within travel, hotels are among the categories members most want to redeem against, alongside vacation rentals, air travel, car rentals, tours and activities, and cruise. The snapshot doesn't support a clean rank order across all six, so treat that as a set of strong candidates rather than a leaderboard.2
One caveat worth holding onto: stated interest is not booked volume. Survey respondents are generous with their enthusiasm. But an 83-to-40 gap is wide enough that even a heavy discount on self-reported intent leaves travel well in front.
The supply side figured this out first, and it changed how they think about the currency.
Speaking to Today's Hotelier, Wyndham's Michael Shiwdin, Group VP of Loyalty and Partnerships, put it plainly: "Points and free nights still matter, but loyalty today is about influencing decisions, not just rewarding past stays."1 That's a meaningful shift in posture. A rebate looks backward at a transaction that already happened. A demand driver looks forward at one that hasn't.
The membership numbers moved with it. The same article cites CBRE data showing hotel loyalty program membership grew 14.5% in 2024, and Wyndham says nearly half of all its check-ins now come from Wyndham Rewards members.1
Hotel points redemption also appears to change behavior, not just discount it. Hilton Honors VP Brad Anderson pointed to "58 percent reporting that they use loyalty points to try new properties, activities, and destinations."1 Points aren't just subsidizing stays members were already going to book. Often they're buying the stay a member wouldn't have risked at cash price, which is exactly the behavior a program owner should want to fund.
Experiential redemption has moved from novelty to table stakes at the top of the
Be clear about what that evidence is and isn't. There's no solid public data on attraction or theme park redemption volume, and nobody should be quoting a growth rate for it. What we have is directional: the programs with the most sophisticated redemption analytics are all building in the same direction at once. It’s one of the clearest signs of how travel is transforming points redemption in loyalty programs.
Points redemption for theme parks is where that logic bites hardest, because a park ticket is a high-consideration purchase with a real cash price attached. A member who covers a family's park day with points has gotten something they can describe to other people. A $15 gift card does not generate that conversation.
You can assemble the right catalog and still lose. The interface is where good inventory goes to die.
Deloitte's 2025 Consumer Loyalty Program Survey, covering 5,564 US loyalty members, found that "40% of all respondents admit to sometimes forgetting to redeem."3 Not "chose not to." Forgot. Two in five members have earned a balance and let it sit, and Deloitte's own recommendation is that redemption should feel like a seamless transaction rather than a separate errand.
That's a redemption experience problem, and it feeds directly into your redemption rate. The same research found that the average consumer enrolls in eight programs but actively participates in five, and that 51% engage with only one program within a given industry.3 The programs that go dormant aren't usually the ones with bad rewards. They're the ones where getting to the reward required more steps than the reward was worth.
Travel redemption raises the stakes here, because booking is inherently more complex than picking a gift card off a grid. If a member has to leave your environment, create a second account, and decipher a separate inventory system, you've reintroduced every point of friction you just spent money removing.
There isn't a credible industry benchmark, and anyone publishing one is usually selling something adjacent to it. Redemption rates vary enormously by currency design, earn velocity, and catalog value, so a cross-industry average tells you almost nothing about your own program. Track your own trend instead: what share of active members redeem at least once per year, and how long it takes a new member to go from first earn to first burn. Those two lines moving in the right direction matter more than any published figure.
Both, depending on which column you're reading. Breakage looks good on the balance sheet. Unredeemed points are a liability that may never come due,and it’s exactly the kind of loyalty program points liability your CFO should care about. But Deloitte's finding that 40% of members sometimes forget to redeem suggests those balances often belong to people who are quietly drifting away.3 Finance and marketing reasonably weigh this differently, and neither is being unreasonable. The question is whether your breakage is a margin cushion or an early warning.
Members are not demanding that their credit union become an online travel agency. They're saying that if the inventory is there and the points work, they'll use it.
Worth naming the trade-off: travel redemption is operationally heavier than a gift-card catalog. Inventory shifts, rates move, cancellations and service issues land somewhere, and somebody has to own the support call when a booking goes wrong. That's a real cost, and it's why most programs default to the easy catalog even when they know it underperforms.
That operational weight is the problem Access Development solves. Access gives members a white-labeled travel and attractions platform with 850,000+ hotels and 120+ theme parks, water parks, attractions, and tours, all at private rates not available on public booking sites. Hotel rates run below sites like Expedia and Booking.com, and park and attraction tickets run below public pricing. The park inventory is the hard part to replicate. Access is one of only a handful of authorized resellers integrated directly with Disney and Universal ticketing, which isn't a relationship a mid-sized loyalty program can assemble on its own. Access also provides 24/7 support for member travel bookings, so the support call doesn't land on your team.
Points are inert until they're spent. Every balance sitting in an account is a promise the member hasn't cashed, and a member who never cashes it eventually stops earning it. What they want to cash it for is no longer a mystery. Travel leads by a wide margin, and the hotel brands repositioned their entire loyalty posture around that fact.
The members already enrolled in your program are the ones this decision affects. They're the file you've already paid for.
If your catalog is still built around gift cards and drinkware, start there. Swap the travel mug for something a member would actually tell someone about.