When travel guidesmeet food-lover loyalty

The strategic story behind Travel Guides is competitive in the obvious places: travellers already judge you against Lonely Planet on authority and against Google on convenience. Google Trips was the memorable Google-branded trips experience before those flows folded into wider Google travel and maps surfaces. The Telegraph’s edge was never raw data; it was decades of Telegraph Travel journalism (critics, destination editors, restaurant writing) turned into an owned app that could sit beside those references instead of feeling like a brochure. See Telegraph Travel Guides app for how the title framed the product alongside its bench. Coverage around the app has described destination bundles built from Telegraph travel journalism (including additions such as Edinburgh and Northern Ireland over time), offline-friendly browsing so roaming charges do not punish curiosity, and structured picks (hotels, food, walks) with numbers and booking cues where they matter. That is loyalty by another name: the reader grants attention because the by-line carries authority.

John Lewis Partnership’s Annual Report and Accounts for 2024/25 puts hard numbers on what “earning attention” looks like in grocery. My Waitrose grew 7% to 4.6 million active members; My John Lewis grew 11% to 3.7 million. Across the Partnership, more customers shopped the brands year on year. Waitrose sales rose 4.4% to £8.0 billion, with revenue at £7.5 billion, volumes up 2.6%, and continued investment in lower prices, range work such as Waitrose No.1, refits, and convenience formats. Loyalty here is not an abstract points battle: it is how the Partnership signals member-only value, personalised offers, and food-led rituals that fit a premium grocer.

The parallel is useful for product people. The Travel Guides app asks travellers to download and return when they plan the next trip; My Waitrose asks shoppers to scan and return every week. Both products must reward frequency without feeling transactional. That means honest surfaces: show why an offer exists, when it ends, and what “good” looks like for this brand, whether that brand is award-winning travel writing or Partner service on the shop floor.

“More customers shopped with our brands this year, up 2%, and we saw growth in our loyalty schemes: My Waitrose up 7% to 4.6 million active members and My John Lewis up 11% to 3.7 million.”

— John Lewis plc Annual Report and Accounts 2025 (Chair’s review)

Design and strategy teams often separate “content product” from “retail loyalty.” The annual report suggests that separation is tidier on a slide than in the customer’s life. People who care about quality food often care about where they travel; Telegraph readers who invest in long-form travel guidance are precisely the audience who notice when a loyalty scheme respects their time. The art direction on the cover here is candid travel: city light, phone in hand, everyday motion, because that is the texture of both journeys: real places, real baskets, real trade-offs on price and pleasure.

If you are building the next generation of membership experiences, steal the constraint, not the UI. For Travel Guides, the constraint is editorial credibility under time pressure on mobile. For My Waitrose, it is premium service plus transparent personalisation at scale. Get those right and the metrics follow, whether you measure repeat trips or repeat shops.