Glossary
What is customer churn?
Churn is customers who stop coming back. In hospitality, almost nobody announces that they are leaving, which makes it hard to spot. One regular who has drifted away looks exactly like a quiet week.
Churn in a subscription business is an event. In hospitality it is an absence, and absences are much harder to notice.
Defining it at all
You need a definition before you can measure it: a regular who has not visited in three times their usual gap, for instance. Any reasonable definition beats none.
Why a loyalty programme helps
Without one you cannot tell a lapsed regular from a customer who never existed. With one, the same person has a record, and their silence is visible.
The cheapest win in the business
Contacting the group who used to come often and recently stopped is almost always the highest-return action available, and it costs nothing but attention.