Does customer loyalty matter to businesses anymore?
A few Disneyland fans emailed me that question after the resort announced last month that it would “sunset” its annual pass program. While most of the fans I have heard from have supported the decision to scrap the program and start over, some fans remain upset at what they see as a snub of Disney’s most loyal fans.
But what does “loyalty” even mean in the business world? Is a loyal customer the one who shows up the most often … or the one who spends the most money?
I don’t know many businesses that want to turn away good customers. Disneyland managers have said that they are working on a new program to replace the old annual pass system, so that the parks can continue to welcome devoted fans once they are allowed by the state to return. Like many of those fans, I hope that Disneyland comes up with a solution that allows Disney to manage attendance and keep the parks from being overcrowded, while not turning the resort into an exclusive playground open only to the wealthiest visitors as a result.
It’s interesting to me that both fans and Disneyland managers have talked about the annual pass program as a relationship. Buying a Disneyland AP felt like more than a business transaction for thousands of fans. It felt like the next step in a relationship that began the first time a fan walked through the turnstiles and started falling in love with the parks.
Yet the cold truth is that buying an annual pass was a business transaction. That transaction had to make sense for both sides to be successful, and the more that annual passholders overcrowded the parks, the less sense the transaction made for Disney. A loyal customer might be one who shows up often, but a lucrative customer is one who pays more relative to what they consume. When loyal customers start crowding out lucrative ones, a company has a problem.
The pandemic was going to make it impossible for Disneyland to welcome both loyal and lucrative customers while operating at the reduced capacity that the state was going to require when the parks reopened. COVID-19 forced the break-up that many people saw coming for some time. That leaves Disneyland’s most frequent visitors mourning not just a formal interruption of their relationship with Disney but also the loss of a sweet deal that allowed them to get into the parks for way less money per visit than they likely will have to spend under whatever new program Disney announces.
Disneyland gets to make the next step here. Disney might be in the business of selling fantasy, but it has to deliver reality. And the reality is that Disneyland’s theme parks simply cannot handle the number of visits that its old annual passholders wanted to make. That is something that both Disneyland — and its fans — need to recognize if they are going to build a new relationship that works.
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February 02, 2021 at 09:33PM
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Niles: Why loyalty wasn’t enough to save Disneyland’s annual pass program - OCRegister
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