England-Hall leaves Loyalty NZ for role as Tourism NZ chief

Tuesday 20th December 2016

Stephen England-Hall has resigned as chief executive of Loyalty New Zealand, which analyses the spending habits of consumers who sign up to loyalty schemes, to take the top job at Tourism New Zealand.

He will start the new role at the state-funded tourism marketing body, famed for its 100% Pure New Zealand campaign, in April next year.

England-Hall has been CEO of Loyalty since November 2013, having previously worked in marketing for Syncapse Corp, a New York-based firm that uses social media data to help big brands target customers more accurately. Prior to that, he spent two years as CEO of Razorfish, a London-based marketing firm that acts as Tourism NZ's global media company.

It has been a year of change for loyalty schemes in New Zealand, with Fly Buys parting company with Air New Zealand's Airports in October after a six-year relationship. In an interview with Fairfax Media this week, England-Hall said he had tried to stay outside the "yelling match" of the flurry of loyalty programmes this year.

The report said some 60 percent of all retail transactions in New Zealand were linked to Fly Buys, giving the company a huge amount of detailed information about the spending habits of Kiwis which it can then analyse and sell back to companies. In exchange, consumers accumulate 'reward' points that can be redeemed for products ranging from bottles of wine (80 points) to an upscale home brew kit (41,560 points).

Loyalty NZ chairman Phil Norman said in a statement that the business, which is 25 percent owned by each of Z Energy, Bank of New Zealand, IAG New Zealand and Foodstuffs Ventures, was "well ahead of plan for the current financial year on the back of double-digit growth in issuance and redemption activity,” having added 214,000 Fly Buys members in the past 12 months while launching Lab360, its data and analytics business.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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