Agoda’s Damien Pfirsch on why travel is no longer a side perk for financial and loyalty brands, but one of the most valuable, and hardest to get right, customer relationships in their portfolio.
Travel used to be the reward you cashed in your points for. Now it’s shaping up to be one of the most powerful ways banks, fintechs and loyalty platforms can keep a customer coming back. As travel discovery scatters across OTAs, social platforms, super apps and financial ecosystems, the old rules of winning on inventory alone are fading fast. Trust, localisation and a seamless experience from search to servicing are becoming the real currency.
Agoda’s own data shows loyalty partners who connect booking, payments and rewards into a single experience can see up to 40% of their customers book more than once. In South Korea, a partnership with KakaoPay turned Agoda into the platform’s single most-searched term, alongside a jump in transaction growth north of 50% year-on-year.
We caught up with Damien Pfirsch, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Rocket Travel by Agoda, to dig into what’s really driving this shift. He unpacks why AI is changing how people plan trips faster than how they book them, why a booking flow that feels “foreign” can quietly cost a brand its customer, and what financial institutions still need to figure out before they can own a bigger piece of the travel journey.
Q. You ‘ve said reducing friction across booking, payments, rewards, and servicing is key to winning customer loyalty. What does that integration look like for a bank or loyalty platform partner?
Good integration makes travel feel like a natural extension of the ecosystem the customer already knows and trusts rather than a separate booking site. The partner retains the customer relationship, brand experience and loyalty proposition, while we handle the complexity of travel infrastructure. In practice, customers should be able to discover an offer, search and book, view their points balance and pay with points, cash or both in one place. If plans change, servicing should recognise the booking, payment and loyalty context, so the customer does not have to repeat the same information.
The right model depends on the partner, whether that is an embedded API, a white-label experience or a modular setup. What matters is that inventory, pricing, payments, rewards and servicing work as one proposition. When that happens, travel becomes more than a redemption benefit.
Q2. If travellers aren’t ready to hand over booking decisions to AI, what would need to change for that threshold to shift?
The shift won’t be confined to one dramatic leap. The threshold will likely shift gradually, as AI proves that it can deliver better outcomes consistently across the entire booking journey. The appetite is already there. Agoda’s 2026 Travel Outlook Report found that 63% of surveyed Asian travellers say they are likely to use AI to plan their next trip. However, only 44% say they trust AI-generated information, and 46% remain neutral. Travellers are comfortable using AI for inspiration and planning, but most are less ready to hand over an expensive and difficult-to-reverse purchase.
For that to change, AI needs to be fueled by real-time, verified inventory, pricing and availability. It also needs to explain its recommendations clearly, whether they are based on location, cancellation policy, family needs, price or past preferences. Travel has too many edge cases for a black-box answer to work.
The likely path is an AI-assisted journey: narrowing options, flagging disruptions and suggesting the next best action. Over time, travellers may allow AI to make changes within clear parameters, while retaining the ability to approve, amend or reverse decisions. Adoption will vary by market and customer segments, so the experience must also be localized and supported by human help when situations become complex.
Damien Pfirsch, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Rocket Travel by Agoda: AI needs to be fueled by real-time, verified inventory, pricing and availability. It also needs to explain its recommendations clearly, whether they are based on location, cancellation policy, family needs, price or past preferences.
Q3. You’ve said that localisation has moved from a feature to the core product. Can you give an example of a market where getting local payment, communication channels, or servicing right changed conversion or retention for a partner?
South Korea is a strong example because digital habits there are highly local. People are already used to discovering, paying, earning rewards and managing daily services inside a few local digital ecosystems. Even a strong travel offer can lose relevance if the customer has to leave that ecosystem or use an unfamiliar booking flow. More recently, we brought Agoda’s hotel booking experience directly into the KakaoBank app.
That is what I mean when I say localisation has become part of the core product. It is about where the offer appears, how customers discover it, how they pay and how the experience fits their existing habits. When those elements work together, partners are better positioned to turn attention into bookings and repeat engagement. Customers can engage with Agoda across the wider Kakao ecosystem they already rely on every day, from payments to banking to the everyday touchpoints in between, so travel fits naturally into habits they already have, rather than asking them to step outside of them.
Q4. What’s the biggest capability gap you see financial institutions still need to close before they can own more of the travel journey?
Financial institutions already have the customer relationship, trust, payment behavior and loyalty data. What they often lack is the operating capability to turn those strengths into a travel journey that works reliably from search through to servicing. Travel is operationally complex. Customers expect live inventory, competitive pricing, clear redemption value, familiar payment options and support when plans change. If any one of those elements breaks down, the institution could risk losing the customer from its ecosystem.
The second gap is travel-specific optimisation. Owning more of the journey means knowing what members actually do inside the travel experience: which destinations they search, where they drop off, whether they respond better to points, cash discounts, upgrades or bundled benefits. A bank may know its customer financially, but travel intent is a different layer of behavior.
So, the opportunity is to connect financial trust with travel execution. The bank or financial institution owns the customer relationship and loyalty proposition; a travel partner provides the supply, pricing, redemption mechanics, servicing and data feedback loop underneath. That is what allows a financial institution to play a bigger role in travel without having to build or operate the full travel stack itself.
Q5. From Agoda’s perspective, what does a good partnership look like economically and how do you divide value and risk between the supply side, the payments and rewards side, and the audience-owning brand?
A good partnership is one where everyone is growing the customer relationship; rather than each party focusing only on maximising its share of a single booking. Travel can generate booking revenue, but it can also increase loyalty engagement, payment activity, repeat usage and customer lifetime value.
Each participant contributes a different part of the equation. Access to relevant travel products and inventory creates the foundation. The payments or rewards partner makes the value easier to use through benefits native to its ecosystem, while the audience-owning brand brings the customer relationship, trust and market context. Agoda’s role is to connect those capabilities through the travel infrastructure, technology, servicing and optimisation underneath.
Risk should be aligned with the areas each party is best equipped to manage, from inventory and fulfillment to payment flows, rewards and customer communication. Our role is to ensure those handoffs remain reliable and do not create friction for the traveler.
The commercial structure will vary by partner, but the incentives should be shared and measurable. Conversion matters, but so do repeat bookings, customer satisfaction, loyalty engagement and sustainable margin. The most successful partnerships shift the discussion from dividing an existing margin to growing the pie through better reach, stronger offers and a more coherent customer experience.
