Главная Коллекция "Otherreferats" Банковское, биржевое дело и страхование Bank loyalty reward programs: win-win partnership between banks and E-travel companies

Bank loyalty reward programs: win-win partnership between banks and E-travel companies

Challenges of building bank loyalty programs. E-travel companies as partners of bank loyalty reward programs. Descriptive analysis of Russian bank loyalty programs with travel rewards. Benefits from partnerships between banks and e-travel companies.

Рубрика	Банковское, биржевое дело и страхование
Вид	дипломная работа
Язык	английский
Дата добавления	23.08.2020
Размер файла	927,1 K

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So, the following are listed the benefits which banks are potentially able to receive from technological collaboration with e-travel companies on development of tourism-related website for bonus points redemption:

ь Provision of broad variety of valuable rewards

ь Reduction of FI's time and money resources on the development of the platform

ь Cutting costs on technological support and updates of the platform

ь Platform's conformity to requirements of being delivered user-friendly and via both mobile and desktop devices

ь Ease of bonus redemption

ь Ability to customize travel platform and redemption scheme in accord to bank's and loyalty program's needs

ь Expenses reduction on performing qualified journey-related customer support

ь E-travel partner's co-funding of loyalty program's rewards

ь Partner's marketing support and customer analytics

ь E-travel partner's co-funding of loyalty program's promotional campaigns

At the same time, the benefits which OTAs are supposed to gain from being a technological partner of bank loyalty program with travel bonus rewards were identified to include the following ones:

ь Growth of tourism-related service sales

ь Increase awareness among B2C customers

ь Raising awareness in B2B sector

ь Being a strategy for entering foreign markets

4. Discussion

As we identified at the first stage of our research, loyalty travel reward programs are rather popular marketing tool utilized by retail banks in Russia. During our interviews with field experts, we outlined the possible reasons of such a wide implementation of point-based projects rewarding its participants with bonuses redeemable on touristic services, which is demonstrated by domestic financial institutions. First of all, the emotional factor plays its role as the journeys are considered to be linked with new experience and to bring positive emotions. Secondly, it is `being in demand' meaning that travel services are consumed in one or another extend by the majority of people, what allows to make LP massive and basically attractive to heterogeneous audience. Thirdly, it is the economic advantage consisted in that despite the desirability of travelling exists, these activities are generally linked to significant expenditures, so people mainly travel not more than a few times per year, thus, the frequency of bonus redemption would be lower in comparison to those programs in which daily purchased categories (for instance, supermarkets) are included. Fourthly, it is a kind of fashion trend started by key retail banks and still motivating their smaller competitors to innovated their LPs considering the best market practices. And last but not least factor is that bonus-based programs are relatively cheaper for FIs in terms of expenses on provision of rewards: in comparison to cashback's almost 100% utilization rate, the redemption rate of points is considerably less what allows banking organization to save on costs if needed or to provide greater rewarding percentages in order to attract potential audience. However, the experts noticed that such a generosity tends to be demonstrated by more young programs in order to involve new clients, while after some times, probably years, the bank usually starts to deteriorate the scoring conditions in order to keep project's economy balanced.

Well, now we are going to proceed with the results of conducted interviews which allowed us to identify mutual benefits of partnerships between banking organizations and e-travel companies, which are performed more and more frequently nowadays in order to enable realization and support of specialized travel platforms offering touristic services on which LP participants are able to redeem their accumulated bonus point.

4.1 Benefits for banks

This part is devoted to the observation of positive gains which banks may receive if decide to launch the loyalty travel reward program with recruiting OTAs as the technological partners of these projects. As far as the identified benefits mainly refer to technological, economic and other aspects, the below we place these three blocks in order to deal with the results systematically.

Technological benefits

Here we are going to cover technological aspects of launching travel websites for loyalty programs' bonus points redemption and discuss whether they are able to correspond to those challenges or contemporary requirements faced by modern FIs when design, introduce or innovated their LPs.

Ready-made IT solution

While planning to launch loyalty program with point-based travel rewards, financial organizations generally face the necessity to develop a system in which accumulated bonuses could be redeemed in exchange for orders of touristic services. Nowadays, two major ways of how to construct these platforms exist: the first one is to develop IT solution from the beginning by itself or by attracting non-specialized contractors/agencies and the seconds one is to partner with e-travel company which already operates on the market and possesses the product which could potentially be suitable for LP's purposes. As we identified during the previous stages of our research, second approach is currently the most preferable one demonstrated by popular retail banks in Russia. The experts reasoned that choice of FIs as when partnering with e-travel company, banking organization receives market-tested efficient toolkit avoiding extra expenditures of time, human and money resources. Besides, in that case banking organization would not be obliged to receive all necessary licenses to sell touristic services by itself. As far as a number of OTAs operating on Russian market have already developed and perform their own IT product which aggregate and sell to travelers a variety of services from broad range of providers, thus, these companies are able to utilize their basic products to created platforms needed by banks. Besides, the proposed solutions usually meet the requirements for delivering from various devices and possessing user-friendly interface since they are mainly the whitelabel copies of online agency's core service which usability is the key priority to win for B2C users. Thus, the challenge linked to mobile- and user-friendliness of the system would probably also be solved without separate improvements. The experts claimed that when e-travel company launches its first website for bank's loyalty program, it may take considerable time to upgrade the core product in order to develop all needed features and satisfy a range of bank's needs, however, each other project is supposed to be launched faster basing on previous developments. Anyway, experts agreed that partnership with appropriate OTA is the fastest route for bank to receive user-tested and mobile-friendly platform to provide bonus LP's participants with a variety of tourism-related rewards.

Customization opportunities

According to the interviewees, e-travel companies generally tend to collaborate with banks via implementation of whitelabel solutions. This approach means that the developed platform is supposed to be a copy of OTA's core IT product but its brand name is excluded and replaced with the banking organization's logotype. Furthermore, whitelabels could be stylized in accordance to banks' guidelines (for example, utilizing corporate fonts), colored basing on FI's brandbook and even designed completely relating on FI's wants and needs. As our experts explained, the platforms are generally constructed with the aim to imitate bank's complete program provision in order to raise customer value perception. During our case studies a number of existing examples of whitelabels' implementation were described (for instance, Alfa Bank, Gazprombank) as well as we identified that e-travel partner's brand frequently tends to be presented minimally or even replaced with its legal name only. All in all, banks are supposed to benefit from the ability to receive not only a working IT solution if partnering with e-travel companies, but also an individually designed platform with a major focus on financial institution's brand and minimum mentions of OTA.

Moreover, there is one more tool for customization of the platform stated by our interviewees. It consists in the ability of e-travel companies to incorporate the constructed website for bonus redemption in the mobile application of bank or its loyalty program (if any) if necessary. In that case, partners usually develop seamless authorization (no-additional-authorization) functionality which enables LP's member to log in the FI's application once and then utilize incorporated travel website for bonus redemption with no additional password entering (it could be exemplified with Spasibo from Sberbank case). That option allows to deal with the challenge of provision loyalty program's participants with comfortable process to redeem accumulated points as well as heighten system's overall usability.

Technological support and updates

Among other technological benefits which bank receives when launch travel platform to support LP's rewarding scheme in partnership with OTAs the following two were identified by the experts: technological support of introduced IT solution and the constant product's updating process. The first one relates to that fact that e-travel company's specialists monitor error analytics for bank's developed websites additionally to its core platform, thus, if any failures are tracked, it would be removed. Besides, if any incorrectly working pieces are found practically by any side of the partnership, they also would be upgraded. Thus, not employing own IT-specialists, bank has access to permanent technological support of the platform for loyalty program travel rewards provided by its partner.

The second outlined aspect links with the development of OTAs core service. In order to stay competitive and win for B2C audience, e-travel company is working constantly on improving its IT-product in terms of usability, functionality, adding new features to raise conversion rate, etc. Hence, when tested, these updates are also added to banking travel websites which the partner maintains. Thus, bank's platform launched in partnership with OTA is supposed to be technologically supported and upgraded from time to time even after the introduction.

Easy bonus redemption

The experts highlighted that it is crucially important to make LP participants' process of bonus redemption ease and smooth when utilizing bank's travel website. According to the interviewees, in order to realize any kind of point-based loyalty programs, banking organization needs to introduce IT solution to count and accumulate bonuses from cardholder's transactions. As far as that is ready, FI generally incorporates e-travel company's API to inform and update the partner constantly on LP members' balances of collected bonuses. As soon as the system is applied, redemption process usually becomes easy for both bank and its customers: financial institution could pay for utilized points not permanently but once a month, for instance, while consumers are able to use their accumulations whenever they need. Moreover, clients usually are given the opportunity to redeem any sums of collected bonuses to purchase any of the variety of represented touristic services on the developed platforms, but extra requirements as, for example, the minimum sum or maximum percentage to pay with bonuses, could also be injected technically if loyalty program's rules state those. All in all, generally the process of bonus utilization on bank travel website tends not to take extra efforts from FI's side and remains ease and smooth for LP's participants as well as it could be customized in accordance to loyalty program's terms.

Economic benefits

Proceeding with the beneficial outcomes related to the economic aspects influenced by partnerships between financial institutions and e-travel companies, it is necessary to highlight in advance that all the experts expressed clearly and emphasized the key idea of that banking loyalty programs are the projects of encouraging FI's audience for their loyal behavior which are considered to be accompanied by significant expenses from side of the bank anyway. That is why, when addressing to the topic of saving costs via collaboration with OTA, it is more correct to consider partner's role in mitigation of some expenses while understanding that the core expenditures would still be performed by the banking organization itself.

Less costs on platform's development and maintenance

As we covered before, the travel website supporting loyalty program with travelling opportunities for redemption of accumulated bonuses requires not only expenses on its creation and launch but also operating costs for the maintenance and improvement. According to the experts' practice, partnership with e-travel company allows bank not only to receive a full-fledged and user-friendly platform faster but also to avoid significant burdening expenses on equipment and employing staff or attracting outsourcing resources for the development, monitoring, upgrading and constant testing which in that case would be performed by OTA's specialists.

Reduction of costs on rewards

As we outlined in literature review, the realization of banking LPs is always accompanied with the challenge of how to provide valuable rewards while balancing expenses on them. So, we addressed interviewees with that problem and found out that OTAs, which collaborate with banks, may co-finance partially the rewarding incentives for program's participants. The experts explained that within the observed partnership projects e-travel companies target to earn not from the development of technological platform but from those sales of touristic services which are supposed to be done through the constructed websites. Hence, in order to motivate bank to work on increase of those purchases, the incentives like partnering commission for orders could be implemented. Thus, if loyalty program's participants start to buy railway tickets, book hotels, etc. on the developed website, bank receives some gains which could then be redirected to additional reward for clients for their purchases of touristic services through the travel platform (the same as we identified in cases of Gazprombank and Alfa Bank, for example) or to be taken by FI as the revenue stream for LP's budget. However, if banking organization gives no extra bonuses or any other benefit for their customers for the travel website usage, the loyalty program's members would probably prefer to utilize those services which they are familiar with, so the financial institution will not receive or will lack partnering commissions from order. All in all, the e-travel partner could contribute to the increase of customer value of bank LP's bonus rewards and, thus, make it more attractive, while not burdening FI with additional expenses on that activity or even bringing some revenue to it.

Saving from extra costs on customer support

Among other economic benefits, which banks may receive from technological partnership with e-travel companies, our experts identified savings on the maintenance of specialists which support loyalty program's participants if any questions considering the consumed touristic rewards arise. The interviewees stated that high quality online travel agencies obtain professional contact-centers in order to help the users of their main websites and mobile applications to solve any problems linked with the purchased services (for instance, to return tickets, to change the date of flight, to correct mistakes in issued documents, etc.), so, when partnering with banks, they provide the clients of the newly developed platform with the ability to contact the support center of their core product. Due to that financial institution becomes able to provide their LP members with the professional supporting services while not spending extra money.

Co-funded marketing campaigns

As far as the partnerships researched in our paper are not considered to be co-branded (for example, in comparison to bankcards with the accumulation of miles of the exact airline company), the promotion of these loyalty programs is totally the bank's area of responsibility in both aspect the elaborated tools/communications/campaigns and covering costs on their realization. However, the experts claimed that because of the fact that e-travel companies' primary interested is the growth of users and orders made on banking travel platforms which they develop and support, OTAs may provide financial contributions in order to help FI to achieve that goals via performing marketing activities. Thus, it is not the obligatory rule (as, first of all, the touristic service aggregator plays the role of technological partner), but online travel agencies may co-fund loyalty program's promotional campaigns if see the potential increase in sales.

Other benefits

That part describes and argues on other positive aspects which the bank benefits from if attracting e-travel companies to realize technological develop and further full-fledged support of specified platforms for the redemption of tourism-related bonuses/miles/scores. The outlined gains respond to the challenges which was identified at the beginning of our academic research paper.

Variety of rewards

Partnership with e-travel company allows bank to address the challenge of building a variety of valuable rewards which clients will be able to receive if demonstrate loyal behavior towards FI and its products usage. The experts considered tourism-related offers to be one of the most appropriate rewards for almost all types of consumers because the majority of them makes short- or long-term trips at least once years. So, the banking organization, which helps their customers to mitigate or eliminate completely expenses on travelling (via enabling bonus point accumulation and redemption on organizing journey) is supposed to be appreciated (even more in comparison to cashback, which is more invisible and less emotional incentive) for its efforts. So, tourism-related rewards are considered to represent high enough value for different customers, however, the variety of offers is also a crucial aspect. That issue was illustrated by interviewed expert in contrast to co-branded projects in which the clients' choice is extremely narrowed by services of one exact provider (for instance, airline brand): as far as OTAs are usually specialized not on performing travel servicing activities (tour construction, hoteling of visitors, etc.) but in aggregating and selling the existing offers, it strives to the full-fledged representation of all touristic products and their suppliers which could be needed for users to organize trips by themselves. So, if partnering with developed e-travel company, the financial institution becomes able to provide loyalty program's members with the variety of travel services, performed by different firms operating in various spheres, products, direction and price categories, which would be represented on a single platform as well as OTA does within its core business activities.

Marketing support

One more challenge related to banking LPs' launch and performance, which was outlined within the literature review, addresses to the necessity to perform constantly the promotion of the project in order to make possible the achievement of its goals. Primarily it means that banking organization should allocate marketing specialists and, at least, communicate systematically to its loyalty program members or special bankcard holders (depending on the kind of implemented LP) about all the benefits of these membership, terms and tasks which must be carried out to receive the rewards, otherwise the FI risks to perform the project which would not worth the investments. Besides, the travel platform as itself should also be promoted from the side of the bank to the relevant audience in order to stimulate increase in sales and, thus, receiving the partnering commission for attracted purchases. However, according to the interviewed experts, travel industry has its own specificities of how to be promoted efficiently, so the banking marketers focusing on the promotion of FI's products and services may lack necessary experience in performing tourism-related campaigns. Besides, it could be expensive enough for the bank to allocate a separate marketing teams to provide necessary support to introduced loyalty program. So, that is the area which is able to bring additional benefit from partnering with e-travel company because its specialists may be attracted to help their colleagues from banks with planning correct communications as well as preparing and elaborating already tested and working techniques. Our experts reasoned that statement providing even more deep example of that sometimes OTAs not just share necessary knowledge but also employ separate specialists in order to provide FI with a professional marketing support. However, the described approach seems to be realistic only if e-travel company already performs a pull of various partnership projects with banks while, in other case, it would probably be not economically feasible.

According to the interviewees' practice, the most frequent way of marketing support provided by OTAs to banking organization is the preparation of tourism-related content which could be utilized in e-mails, social media publications, LP's blog, etc. Another method consists in the design and incorporation of customer relationship management schemes which are aimed to accompany loyalty program participants' activity on travel platform and trigger them to finish uncomplete bookings, to purchase cross-selling products, etc. One more possible route of marketing support underlies in that due to the business specificities OTA usually have a broad range of direct relationships with airline companies, hotels, etc., so they are able to manage the attraction of these third parties to provide exclusive offers (for instance, discounts) represented on bank travel website for loyalty program members. Those trilateral agreements are supposed to bring more value for performed LP as well as to become an appropriate news for promotional communications. All in all, e-travel partners are assumed to represent professional experience in promotion of travel category and possess a number of means of how to participate in and intensify marketing support of banking loyalty programs with tourism bonus rewards.

Customer analytics

Last but not least, as far as the travel platform is provided and supported by online travel agency, that company gather and storage valuable data on loyalty program members' travel preferences. That information could be analyzed and shared with the financial institution in order to be utilized, for examples, while developing promotional strategy or innovating on its terms and conditional. However, the experts noticed that data is provided in aggregated form because of the legislations rules.

All in all, if partnering with e-travel company to construct a platform supporting loyalty program with travel bonus rewards, bank is supposed to save in time, people and money resources to receive customized, tested, mobile- and user-friendly IT infrastructure for comfortable bonus redemption on a broad variety of valuable tourism-related rewards as well as to be provided with professional technological, customer and marketing support of implemented solution. Besides, the OTA's participation in co-funding of higher rewards and promotional campaign are also able to be done. However, the experts also claimed that beneficial outcomes mainly depend on e-travel partners experience in partnering with banks as well as on its internal human and financial resources with could be allocated and contributed to B2B direction development.

4.2 Benefits for e-travel companies

In this section, we are going to describe those benefits which e-travel companies receive if participate in partnerships with banks via creating and maintaining platforms for loyalty bonus points redemptions.

Growth of sales

According to the results of semi-structured interviews with field experts, the increase in travel service orders was outlined as the primary reason of why a number of OTAs are interested in and already collaborate with financial institutions via implementation of specialized websites to support loyalty programs' rewarding schemes. As we already discussed before, banks are usually interested in locking their customers in platform usage not only while redeeming the accumulations but also to attract their ordinary sales of tourism-related services via giving additional incentives as returning extra points, for example. Thus, partnership is the most efficient way for OTAs of how to extent their service sales to such a locked, motivated and achievable for marketing communications (via banks' channels) audience in addition to those purchases which would be done with the utilization of bonuses. However, interviewees also outlined the situations in which FI's audience is rather small and/or not additionally incentivized to buy on bank's travel website. They explained that in such cases technological partner may agree and impose on banking organization a kind of subscription fee if not reaching a fixed minimum amount of touristic service sales in order to compensate their developmental and support costs as well as to stimulate the partner to focus more on LP's promotion, introduction of more favorable conditions with the aim to grow volumes of orders.

Growth of B2C brand awareness

During the interviews with experts we identified that raising of awareness of e-travel company's brand could be a possible beneficial outcome of participation in partnerships with banks. One the one hand, popular retail banks tend to minimize OTA's identities presence within the developed platform in order to in order to heighten FI's value perception by LP's participants. On the other hand, e-travel partner's brand is represented within travel documents (tickets, online payment receipts, etc.) issue when customer purchase travel services via those websites as well as in e-mails' address, phone messages accompanying bookings, etc. Hence, in one or another extent, we are able to conclude on OTA's growth of B2C brand awareness via partnership projects with FIs. Moreover, during stage 2 of our research we outlined several cases (for instance, Zenit Bank, Levoberezhniy Bank) with the co-branded representation of both partners within launched travel websites. The experts stated that such approach could be elaborated when OTA possesses a strongly recognizable name on the market and, thus, could be mentioned within LP's platform and communications in order raise LP's value for existing customers as well as to bring to FI new audience which is already familiar with e-travel partners servicing product, prefer and trust it, and, thus, would probably be interested in switching the bank and joining to offered program. However, interviewees also agreed on the point that B2C brand awareness could slightly be identified by OTAs as a considerable purpose stated for the partnerships because they tend to consider banking clients as a separate audience which obtains a range of benefits from the usage of specialized platforms, so these people would unlikely to prefer to consume e-travel companies' services directly.

Growth of B2B brand awareness

At the same time, e-travel partner's brand recognition on B2B market matters highly enough. The experts stated that each new partnership with FI becomes beneficial to OTAs in terms of both the development of necessary toolkit, additional useful features which become able to be proposed for new potential bank-clients and promotion as the experienced technological partner. According to the interviewees' practice, when smaller financial institutions start to design their loyalty programs with bonus travel rewards, they tend to analyze best market examples, which are majorly demonstrated by the leading players, and address to their technological solution providers what generates to these online travel agencies an organic inflow of possible prospective partners to collaborate with.

Strategy for foreign markets entry

Last but not least, all the experts identified one more benefit which consisted in that partnerships with banks operating in foreign countries could be a strategy to enter new markets abroad. As we already discussed above, bank loyalty program's participants usually tend to be locked in the utilization of travel platform in terms of both bonus redemption and ordinary money-paid consumption of touristic services. Due to that, when partnering with foreign banks, OTA does not need to take considerable extra efforts for promotion, achieving clients' trust and fighting with the competitors in order to attract its service sales in comparison to the entrance to business-to-client foreign market directly. Besides, the B2C brand awareness abroad is also supposed to be increased in that case. However, these partnerships require e-travel companies to perform additional product developments among which are content translation, operating in accordance to local market legislation, etc.

All in all, if participating in partnering projects with banks to support their loyalty program with travel bonus rewards, OTA is considered not only to increase its IT solution's touristic service sales but also to benefit in such aspects as raising brand awareness on both B2B and B2C markets as well as to receive a possible working tool to entry new markets.

However, the experts outlined a number of rooms for potential improvements which are valued or required by FIs and could be developed by e-travel companies which are interested in participation in partnerships with banking organizations. Among them are the following: 1. ability to accept payments (that is why meta-searching travel firms generally could not become a partner for LP with bonus touristic rewards), 2. to operate in accord to local legislation (for example, consumer data storage, issuing documents about purchases, etc.), 3. representation of various travel services, 4. ability to allocate time and human resources for platforms' design and maintenance, 5. quality of OTA's core IT solution.

5. Limitations and implications

Here we are going to identified the major limitations and implication which the results of our research have. As we already mentioned before, the general focus of our study was limited to the consideration of banking loyalty programs with travel-related point-based rewards only while other incentivizing schemes as cashbacks and discounts were excluded from the observation even if they are also possible to be linked to provision of touristic gains. Besides, the research covered Russian market specifically as well as we also narrowed it down to the studying of top-50 retail banks. Thus, these aspects impose limitation to generalization of the outcomes received in our paper, however, the study still contains valuable results.

We consider that our research would be useful for both academic and business sectors. One the one hand, our study deepens the knowledge in field of banking loyalty programs with point-based rewards, especially in terms of attraction of partners in order to solve or mitigate the challenges linked with these project's realization as well as in extending the topic of additional techniques which banks utilize to heighten projects' value for customers. On the other hand, financial institutions are supposed to receive the groundwork and possible insights on how their LPs could be designed, improved or even innovated considering the market tendencies and practices of the leading competitors. Besides, the e-travel companies are assumed to outline the rooms for improvement of their IT solutions in order to participate in partnerships with banks as well as to decide primarily on potential prospects of the development of such B2B direction.

As for the future researches, our paper could be developed in two major directions: internationally in order to consider banking loyalty programs with bonus rewards performed by foreign FIs and domestically with the aim to study other formats of possible collaborations between financial institutions and OTAs.

Conclusion

Nowadays, business environment is experiencing an extensive development of the area of customer loyalty management. Heightening competition within the majority sectors of economy stimulates market players to focus more on consumer retention and enhancing profitable behavior of their existing clients. In order to prevent customer's switch to competing goods and services as well as to attract new audience, a variety of loyalty programs with rewards are currently launching and conducting by companies worldwide. Moreover, the growing interest towards that area of marketing activities provokes not only the emergence of new projects, but also forces businesses to improve and innovate constantly with their LPs in order to respond to competitors' strategies.

The banking industry was one of the early adopters of encouraging cardholders' loyalty and attracting new comers via implementation of different kinds of rewarding schemes, among which are bonus points collection, cashbacks, discounts on FI's services and partners' special offers, as well as intensifying beneficial behavior through adding those techniques as tiers and gamification, and proceeds to perform that now. However, a number of challenges also exist and influence modern banks' LPs launch and maintenance, among which are the necessity to provide various and valuable rewards, to balance costs on project development and expenses on provision of incentives, to construct technological platform considering accessibility via digital channels, ease of bonus points redemption, development of user-friendly omni-channel interface, marketing support to promote the program.

Since the field of banking loyalty programs is developing intensively and attracting growing interest but still remains understudied nowadays, we realized our research in order to deepen the knowledge about partnerships which FIs are able to perform in order to improve their projects and address to the outlined challenges. In our paper, we focused on LPs with travel bonus rewards and on the collaborations with e-travel companies which develop technological platforms for accumulations' redemption. Mixed methodology, including descriptive analysis, case studies and interviews with experts, was applied in order to conclude on being in demand of these partnerships as well as on benefits which both participating parties receive.

First of all, we identified that point-based tourism-related loyalty programs are already widely utilized by retail banks in Russia - more than a half of those organizations from top-50 ranking currently perform at least one project encouraging customer loyal attitude in that format. Secondly, the bankcard which allows to accumulate travelling bonuses only is the most preferable kind of banking LPs with travel rewards among those which are implemented in Russian Federation. Thirdly, the analysis demonstrated that the FIs occupying leading positions on the B2C market tend more to the implementation of tourism-related LPs than their smaller competitors. Besides, we found out that the majority of banking loyalty programs of the observed type were introduced and are performed together with a specialized travel website providing a range of incentivizing gains for LP's participants - the journey-linked services to redeem accumulated points for. We also received that at least 8 e-travel companies are partnering with the leading retail banks in Russia with the reason to develop and support those platforms. When studying in-depth, we discovered that retail banks do introduce tier-based and gamification mechanics in the rewarding schemes as well as provide additional incentives (welcome bonuses, birthday point gifts, etc.) in order not only to encourage consumers' loyalty but also enhance beneficial behavior and rewarding greater clients more. In general, we reasoned that leading financial institutions in Russia in one or another extent strive to distinguish their loyalty program from the competitors' ones.

As for the benefits, which bank receives if attracts e-travel partner to participate in the partnership under consideration, we concluded that there are a range of them referred to economic, technological, variety and marketing aspects. Firstly, OTAs' businesses are specialized in aggregation and selling of different travel services (at least airline flights, railway tickets and hoteling accommodations) from numerous suppliers, what makes possible to fulfil the constructed platform for bonus redemption with heterogeneous variety of significantly valuable rewards without attracting a lot of merchants. Secondly, e-travel partner may participate in additional rewards' co-funding what allows FIs to solve the necessity of heightening incentives' value for customers while balancing costs. Thirdly, the utilization of OTAs' IT solution via starting partnerships is considered to save bank significant time and money resources for both the development and further maintenance in terms of avoiding expenses on constant technical support and updates. Besides, the proposed solutions usually meet the requirements for delivering from various devices and possessing user-friendly interface since they are mainly the whitelabel copies of online agency's core service which usability is the key priority to win for B2C users. Fourthly, in case of collaboration with e-travel company, financial institution was identified to benefit from professional customer support provided by the partner for LPs' participants consuming touristic services via specially constructed websites as well as the FI itself saves costs on employing and training that staff. Fifthly, the partnering bank is able to receive experienced marketing support on how to promote efficiently the area of travelling linked to performance of loyalty program with travel bonus rewards as well as to receive co-funding from the partner on conduction of promotional campaigns. Sixthly, OTAs' whitelabel solutions were found out to be are able to be customized comprehensively in accord with FI's corporate style while minimizing the service provider's presence (if needed) on the website and in LP's materials what was considered to influence positively program's value perception. In addition to that, the platforms created by e-travel partners were identified and exemplified to be incorporated in bank's mobile application using no-additional-authorization mechanics what also contributes considerably to the project's comfortable usability. Last but not least, the possible scheme of bonus redemption was concluded to be able to be realized in a way which is simply understandable from LP participant's side as well as could also be customized technically in accordance to program's redemption terms and peculiarities.

At the same time, a range of benefits which e-travel companies receive from partnerships on bank loyalty programs with tourism-related rewards were also identified. Potential growth of sales was concluded to be one of the major reasons to collaborate with financial institutions and develop technological platforms for LPs' support since it enables partner to reach the locked and motivated audience with the offering of its touristic services. Furthermore, the increase of OTA's brand awareness in both B2C and B2B markets was outlined to be reached though participation in projects under consideration. And one more significant beneficial aspect was identified to be an entrance to foreign B2C markets via launching and developing partnerships on the creation of technological platforms for loyalty programs with travel rewards support for banks abroad.

To conclude the paper, we consider that our research would be useful for both academic and business sectors. One the one hand, our study deepens the knowledge in field of banking loyalty programs with point-based rewards. One the other hand, financial institutions are supposed to receive the groundwork and possible insights on how their loyalty programs could be improved or even innovated considering the market tendencies and practices of the leading competitors. Besides, the e-travel companies are assumed to outline the rooms for improvement of their IT solutions in order to participate in partnerships with banks as well as to decide primarily on potential prospects of the development of such B2B direction. As for the future researches, our paper could be developed in two major directions: internationally in order to consider banking loyalty programs with bonus rewards performed by foreign FIs and domestically with the aim to study other formats of possible collaborations between financial institutions and OTAs.

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Appendixes

Appendix 1 Data on bank loyalty travel reward programs in Russia

№	Bank	Point-based LPs with travel rewards:	Is there bank's travel website to redeem bonus points?	E-travel technological partner(-s) of bank's travel website (if any)
		Bankcard(-s) with travel bonuses only (= travel bankcard)	No specified travel bankcard(-s):
			Other LPs with the option to accumulate and redeem travel bonuses	Other LPs with non-travel bonuses but redeemable on travel services also
1	Sberbank	yes	no	yes	yes	OneTwoTrip
2	VTB Bank	no	yes	yes	yes	OneTwoTrip
3	Gazprombank	no	yes	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
4	Alfa Bank	yes	no	no	yes	E-commerce corporation LLP (Aviakassa)
5	Russian Agricultural Bank	yes	no	yes	yes	Авиатурне
6	Bank Otkritie	yes	no	yes	yes	OneTwoTrip
7	Raiffeisen Bank	yes (2)	no	no	no (redemption on partner's website) yes	iGlobe.ru OneTwoTrip
8	Credit Bank of Moscow	no	no	no	no	-
9	Sovcombank	no	no	no	no	-
10	Post Bank	no	yes	yes	yes* *the same with VTB Bank	OneTwoTrip
11	Tinkoff Bank	yes	no	no	yes' `there is no bonus redemption, only higher accruals	Booking.com Travelata.ru OneTwoTrip Rentalcars Economy Bookings
12	Rosbank	no	yes	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
13	UniCredit	yes	no	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
14	Bank Saint Peterburg	yes	no	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
15	SMP Bank	no	no	no	no	-
16	Moscow Industrial Bank	no	no	no	no	-
17	Home Credit & Finance Bank	yes	no	no	no (cashback)	-
18	Uralsib	no	no	yes	yes	OneTwoTrip
19	Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development	no	no	no	no	-
20	Russian Standard Bank	yes	no	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
21	Vozrozhdenie	no	no	no	no	-
22	Citibank	yes	no	yes	no (cashback)	-
23	Vostochniy Bank	yes	no	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
24	Rossiya Bank	no	no	no	no	-
25	Ak Bars Bank	no	yes	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
26	Absolut Bank	no	no	no	no	-
27	Renaissance Credit	no	no	no	no	-
28	MTS Bank	no	no	no	no	-
29	Zenit Bank	yes	no	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
30	Russian National Commercial Bank	no	no	no	no	-
31	Promsvyazbank	yes	no	no	no (cashback)	-
32	Russian Regional Development Bank	yes	no	no	yes	OneTwoTrip
33	Credit Europe Bank	yes	no	no	no (cashback)	-
34	Zapsibkombank	no	no	no	no	-
35	Moscovskiy Oblastnoi Bank	no	no	no	no	-
36	Center-invest Bank	no	no	no	no	-
37	Kuban Credit Bank	no	no	no	no	-
38	Transcapitalbank	no	no	no	no	-
39	OTP Bank	no	no	no	no	-
40	Investtorgbank	-	-	-