The Power of Prepaid Loyalty: Turning Top-Ups into Guest Engagement and Growth
In the tourism and experience-driven industry, traditional loyalty programmes based on discounts and repeat transactions no longer deliver the impact they once did. Travellers today are fluid, informed, and purpose-driven. They don’t just want perks, they seek value alignment, seamless experiences, and meaningful connection.
To keep up, tourism brands must rethink loyalty as more than a marketing add-on. The next evolution? Turning points into prepaid, owned value that enhances both user experience and business performance.
In this article, we explore how prepaid point systems create measurable impact across the guest journey: increasing engagement, ensuring cash flow predictability, and enabling community participation. We'll also look at how AI-ready loyalty systems like PERS can support tourism brands in scaling and optimizing loyalty across physical and digital touchpoints.
A 2024 “Barometer” report on European festivals found that: 74% of top‑ups are made online in advance, which correlates with higher consumption ease and less friction on‑site. Weezevent
Why Prepaid Points Outperform Traditional Loyalty
Prepaid loyalty changes the guest relationship from reactive to proactive. Instead of rewarding past purchases, it invites users to commit in advance, turning them into active participants before they even arrive.
This shift leads to three key business advantages:
Revenue before arrival: When guests top-up their wallet or credit system in advance, you capture cash flow early-stabilising revenue and reducing off-season vulnerability.
Higher average spend: Guests who pre-pay are more likely to redeem their credits fully, explore add-ons, and engage with premium offerings.
Data-driven decisions: Every top-up and redemption is traceable, generating behavioural data that feeds into loyalty insights, partner performance, and future campaigns.
These benefits make prepaid loyalty a powerful tool for improving tourism customer engagement and increasing guest lifetime value.
From Transactions to Belonging
Traditional loyalty programmes risk becoming interchangeable. Prepaid systems create emotional ownership. When users choose to invest upfront, they take a stake in the experience, and that investment deepens their connection.
Psychologically, the act of topping up a balance creates commitment. Behavioural science shows that pre-committed users show higher attendance, interaction, and return rates. In tourism, this could mean more guests showing up for booked activities, increased spend during the stay, and greater likelihood to return or refer.
By embedding prepaid value within loyalty, brands shift from transactional logic to relationship-first loyalty.
A Model for Community-Driven Loyalty
Prepaid loyalty systems also enable community-driven impact. Guests can choose to allocate part of their top-up value to local initiatives, eco-projects, or partner programmes. This creates a virtuous cycle where:
Businesses gain revenue and actionable data
Guests feel more engaged and purposeful
Local communities benefit directly
By designing top-up flows that integrate optional donations or impact-driven rewards, tourism brands elevate their loyalty programme from a benefit to a belief system.
This approach supports the rise of sustainable tourism loyalty models that connect economic, environmental, and emotional value.
Real-World Impact: Hospitality in Practice
CerdanyaViva Eco Resort https://cerdanyaviva.com/eco-comunitat/
A compelling example of prepaid loyalty in action is Cerdanya Viva, an eco-resort in Catalonia, Spain. The resort offers a wallet-based loyalty programme powered by PERS where guests can top—up for spa treatments, dining, and curated in-resort experiences. During the top-up process, guests can choose to allocate 1%, 2%, or 5% of their credit to local sustainability initiatives.
These donations are transferred in real-time to the wallet of a local NGO within the same loyalty ecosystem, ensuring full transparency and traceability. Guests see not only their available points balance but also the cumulative impact of donations made by the community.
This model strengthens both hospitality loyalty strategy and guest engagement, while aligning tourism activity with environmental and social goals.
From a business perspective:
Cash flow improves before the guest even arrives
Redemption habits reveal preference data for upselling
The system scales easily with new partners and services
From a guest perspective:
The experience feels seamless and premium
Participation in impact-driven rewards enhances brand affinity
The pre-paid balance removes friction during their stay
How to Build a Top-Up Loyalty Strategy
To build a top-up based loyalty strategy, tourism brands should consider:
What behaviours are you rewarding? Go beyond transactions to include participation, referrals, or sustainable choices.
Where does your community find value? Identify how purpose, local culture, and shared identity can be woven into the loyalty experience.
Is your tech stack ready? Ensure you have a modular, API-first system that integrates across touchpoints and scales with partners.
What data do you need? Design dashboards that turn every point transaction into strategic insight.
A platform like PERS enables these capabilities, combining wallet top-ups with AI-powered dashboards, modular integration, and partner ecosystem flexibility.
Watch full Webinar PERS Purchase: Where Top-Up Points Become Engagement and Revenue - Product Hightlight by Angela Bustillos
Loyalty That Builds Trust and Revenue
Prepaid loyalty systems offer more than just a revenue stream. They foster belonging, reduce dependency on third-party platforms, and create room for brands to scale both impact and intelligence.
By aligning business outcomes with emotional and community drivers, tourism brands can create loyalty ecosystems that deliver value before, during, and long after the stay.
Ready to shift from discounts to owned value?
Discover how PERS helps brands build communities, reduce CAC, and turn satisfied customers into active promoters through a loyalty system designed for long-term growth.
Book a demo and explore how a top-up based loyalty system can elevate your brand.
Book a demo and explore how a top-up based loyalty system can elevate your brand.
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Unlike traditional models that reward users after a transaction, prepaid in loyalty systems activate engagement and revenue before the experience begins. Guests load credits in advance, which leads to higher commitment, increased spend, and improved data tracking for the brand.
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Yes. Solutions like PERS are API-first and modular, meaning they can integrate with CRMs, booking engines, POS systems, and mobile apps to create a seamless guest journey and unify loyalty data across channels.
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Absolutely. Prepaid loyalty systems like PERS are designed to support not only business performance but also purpose-driven models.
A standout example is Cerdanya Viva Eco Resort in Catalonia, Spain. Guests who top up their wallets before arrival can choose to allocate a percentage (1%, 2%, or 5%) of their prepaid amount to support local sustainability projects. These funds are transferred in real time to the wallet of a verified local NGO, visible within the same loyalty ecosystem.
This mechanism does three things at once:
It allows guests to participate actively in the resort’s mission.
It reinforces the value of staying and spending within the ecosystem.
It offers full transparency and traceability, as guests can see how much has been collectively donated through the platform.
This approach turns every top-up into more than a transaction, it becomes a conscious contribution to the local environment and community, fostering both emotional loyalty and long-term brand trust.
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Prepaid loyalty systems offer much more than a retention tool—they function as a growth engine across multiple dimensions.
From a financial perspective, they create predictable cash flow by capturing revenue upfront, often months before the service is delivered. This is especially valuable in tourism, where seasonality and high CAC (customer acquisition costs) can strain margins.
From a behavioural standpoint, they increase average spend per visit and strengthen engagement by shifting the user mindset from passive consumer to active participant. Guests who commit funds in advance are more likely to redeem them fully, explore premium offerings, and return for repeat experiences.
Operationally, systems like PERS provide real-time data on top-up behaviour, redemption patterns, and partner performance. This unlocks a layer of business intelligence that helps you refine offers, design targeted campaigns, and optimise partner ecosystems.
Finally, by combining stored value with features like donations, gamification, and cross-partner rewards, prepaid loyalty programs open new avenues for differentiation, brand trust, and community-building, key drivers for sustainable growth in the experience economy.
