For regular business travellers frequent flyer rewards have long been a perk of the job, something that makes regular business trips seem more bearable.

But the market is now so complicated and it’s a mammoth job to ascertain which loyalty programme will work best for a traveller while keeping within policy and satisfying personal needs.

It seems airlines are increasingly devaluing the spending power of air miles and imposing complicated restrictions on redemption, leading to many business travellers losing faith in loyalty programmes – which might be music to the ears of travel managers.

There is no longer a stereotypical business traveller as many travellers add leisure onto their business trips. The latest in frequent traveller schemes is something dubbed “me shaped loyalty”. This approach recognises and rewards individual travellers on their terms, whether for personal or business travel.

Travel managers continue to have a difficult relationship with reward schemes. From one point of view, they are a bad thing as they may encourage behaviour that is not consistent with the travel mandate.

On the other hand, travel managers recognise that the most frequent travellers have managed to attain premium tier status that has provided perks not only of benefit to themselves, but to the company too.

What’s for certain is that the trend for direct access to the traveller via loyalty programmes is not going away.

Now, in order for a traveller to choose the best rewards programme, they should match their everyday lifestyle with the earning and spending mechanics of these new-look reward schemes and not just their business travel.