As president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, Roger Dow has nearly 40 years of experience in the travel industry, and almost as many ideas to help convenience retailers.
Q: The airline and petroleum retailing industries often must attract customers who consider price to be paramount. How can businesses differentiate themselves beyond price?
A: You can price within a range. You don’t have to be penny for penny. Look at airlines: Southwest has differentiated itself with no nickel-and-diming. Jet Blue has differentiated itself with new TV monitors. I’d ask myself, “What would Nordstrom or Starbucks do if they bought my establishment? Would they do anything different? And if they would, why am I not doing it if it makes sense?”
Q: Vice President Biden made some ill-informed comments about the circulation of air on aircraft at the height of the swine flu scare this spring. How did you respond?
A: It’s a great example of acting immediately. We immediately went out to 1,700 organizations in the travel industry, to every international travel provider and to the U.S. government, and said that we would communicate with them by the end of the day everything they needed to know about swine flu and that they would get an update from us every 24 hours.
With Vice President Biden, we addressed it with respect. I know he did not mean to do any harm, and I know he feels his remarks were unfortunate. So we showed how air is circulated in airplanes. Nobody knew; I didn’t even know that. We said the air is cleaner than your office building. And he [Biden] became the story and actually did us a favor because the president had to go back out and say, “Really, you can fly.”
I think the real lesson here is immediate communication when you have a problem.
Q: While at Marriott, you spearheaded the development of Marriott Rewards, a leading frequent-traveler program. What are the basics of a good loyalty program?
A: The airlines had these programs for about two years but no one in lodging had one. We asked, first of all, what would customers value? We found that what was important to them was different than the airlines. Airlines paid you in miles. If I have a $1,000 ticket and you’ve got a ticket for $300, we each get 500 miles for that trip. We tied ours to expenditures and it was one of the smartest things we ever did.
We also made these programs difficult to replicate. We actually started with a program that was probably a little more costly, but we made the barrier to entry very hard for our competitors.
The lesson learned was to make it important, to make it so people could measure it. How can I make it difficult to duplicate? How can I get people into my program?
Q: What do you look for at a convenience store?
A: Cleanliness is my number-one thing. I also look for logic. Nothing frustrates me more than to go into a convenience store and it’s not logically laid out. And the last thing I look for is speed of getting out — and I appreciate it if someone just looks up and says, “Thanks for being here.”
Roger Dow will be an Opening General Session speaker at the NACS Show on October 21. Visit www.nacsshow.com to register.