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The relevance of this study lies in the search for alternative sales channels, not originally intended for this end, at a time of general crisis within the tourism sector. In spite of the great number of companies from the tourism sector that join multi‐sponsor loyalty platforms and the high volume of tourism service offers (flights, journeys, hotel accommodation, etc.) made and accepted through this medium, little is known about basic aspects for the management of such companies' participation. The paper aims to investigate this issue.

Using data from a leading programme in the Spanish market over a wide period of time – ten years and nearly 100,000 point redemptions have been analysed – additional sales in different tourism service categories, related with the redemption of points, have been evaluated by comparing them with other offers made.

Tourism service offers are indeed one of the reward choices most popular among cardholders. In order to obtain tourism offers the consumer usually makes up their points total in the programme to the required level by making additional payments. It is important to classify cardholders according to their point credit‐rating (the rate at which they accumulate points in the programme) and make them offers in accordance with their preferences.

The benefits that a tourism service provider may obtain by joining a multi‐sponsor loyalty programme and including its services as reward offers are discussed. For programme managers information and conclusions relevant to reward catalogue design are also expounded.

This paper helps tourism service providers to take decisions with regard to joining a multi‐sponsor loyalty programme by reviewing important issues relating to both point redemption and sales.

The aim of this study is to analyze over time the evolution of associated costs of direct marketing in Spain and offer operational conclusions for the optimization of marketing budgets intended for the establishment of contact and/a relationship with the customer.

This study analyses and compares the relationship between advertising messages sent through direct mail, electronic mail, telemarketing and short cell‐phone messages (SMS), over five years. In the context of a loyalty program, and by means of a historical analysis, an alternating media marketing test is presented: a total of 10,000 contacts per medium studied per year were made.

The relationship that exists between the cost per contact and the cost per effective response for each one of the above mentioned direct and interactive media.

A series of operational conclusions can be extracted for direct media planning and its marketing budget optimization with regard to choice of medium according to expected response and choice of medium according to cost per response.

The relevance of this work is based on the relative lack of information in Spain over the cost of communications channelled through direct media. Besides, the inclusion of advertising by SMS in this work is particularly relevant due to the fact that the novelty of this media channel means that it has only been analyzed independently by very few existing studies.