FIRSTLINE’s Katarina Bajic on why understanding who is influencing demand at your venue matters just as much as understanding who is spending.
FIRSTLINE is a guest network built for premium hospitality that combines social networking, loyalty, and royalties to help operators identify their most valuable guests and turn them into a direct acquisition channel. In the interview below, Bajic shares why the traditional loyalty model is falling short, what high-value guests actually want, and how venues can start measuring the influence already sitting inside their own guest base.
What changes are you noticing in how guest loyalty works in Dubai today?
The most important change is that loyalty is no longer passive. Guests have more choice than ever, venues are competing harder, and premium hospitality needs to move beyond basic reward mechanics. Guest loyalty in Dubai is no longer about collecting points or receiving generic offers. It is about recognition, access, relevance, and measurable value.
Operators need to understand who is returning, who is influencing others, and who is genuinely helping the venue grow. FIRSTLINE was built around this shift. It gives operators a way to identify their most valuable guests, understand their behaviour, and turn loyalty into a commercial tool – not just a marketing feature.
What made you rethink the traditional idea of loyalty programmes when building this platform?
The traditional loyalty model is too limited for premium hospitality. It usually stops at one transaction: a guest spends, collects points, and later redeems. But in a market like Dubai, a guest’s value often goes far beyond their own bill.
FIRSTLINE was built around that wider value. It is a social network for dining, where each visit can create visibility, influence, and demand. When a guest dines at a venue, the app can automatically generate a post connected to that experience. Other app users, their network, and like-minded guests can then discover, engage with, and be influenced by that visit. This is where royalties become powerful. With FIRSTLINE, a guest is not only recognised for visiting or spending. More importantly, they can be recognised when their influence drives someone else to visit and spend.
If their dining activity creates attention, and that attention converts into real revenue for the venue, the guest can earn royalties from the value they helped generate. That is the shift – FIRSTLINE turns influence into a measurable acquisition channel for operators, while giving guests a reason to be part of something much bigger than a standard loyalty programme.
How is this approach different from the usual points or discount-led systems most restaurants rely on?
FIRSTLINE is not discount-led. In premium hospitality, discounts can easily weaken brand perception. High-value guests are not looking for cheaper experiences – they are looking for access, recognition, status, and relevance. FIRSTLINE combines social networking, loyalty, royalties, guest influence, and operator intelligence into one ecosystem. Guests are recognised not only for what they spend, but for the wider commercial value they bring through their network and visibility.
The operational difference is also key. FIRSTLINE is fully integrated with SevenRooms, which allows loyalty to connect directly with reservations, guest profiles, and venue-level data. This is a major difference, as many loyalty platforms still operate outside the actual restaurant operation.
In a city like Dubai, how much do social habits and word-of-mouth actually influence where people go out to eat?
In Dubai, social behaviour is one of the strongest drivers of dining decisions. People choose venues based on recommendations, visibility, lifestyle relevance, and where their network is spending time. Dining here is not only about food. It is about the full experience – the room, the crowd, the energy, the brand, and the feeling of being part of the right environment. FIRSTLINE is built around this reality. It takes behaviour that already exists and turns it into something operators can track, understand, and reward through royalties.
How can restaurants build on that behaviour in a way that still feels natural to the guest?
Restaurants should build on social behaviour by making recognition feel like part of the experience, not like a campaign. In premium hospitality, the strongest guest relationships are built through relevance, access, and the feeling that the venue understands the guest’s value. This is especially important with FIRSTLINE’s Platinum Members. These are the highest-value members within the app – guests whose lifestyle, network, dining behaviour, and influence can naturally create visibility and demand for venues.
FIRSTLINE gives operators a refined way to recognise that impact. The app’s automated posting keeps the social layer seamless, while the platform helps venues understand how guest activity contributes to awareness, engagement, and future visits. It turns influence into something operators can actually see and build on.
From a restaurant’s point of view, what does a platform like this actually help improve day to day?
For operators, FIRSTLINE helps bridge the gap between guest experience and commercial performance. On the floor, it helps teams recognise the right guests more clearly. From a business perspective, it helps venues understand which guests are creating repeat value, which benefits are working, and where new revenue is coming from.
Most importantly, it reduces dependence on guesswork. Guest influence, network response, loyalty activity, and commercial return are measured through a bespoke CRM created for partner venues, giving operators a clearer view of what is actually driving value. Adoption is also designed to be seamless for restaurants. There are zero setup costs and zero fees for partner venues, and FIRSTLINE manages the technical setup end-to-end. The venue does not have to carry the implementation process on its side, and we also provide on-site staff training to ensure the platform runs smoothly from day one.
Are diners becoming more aware of the value they bring to a venue beyond just spending?
Yes, and this is one of the biggest shifts happening in premium hospitality. Guests understand that their presence can carry influence. A regular guest with the right network can create visibility, attract similar guests, and shape perception around a venue. FIRSTLINE gives that value structure.
Through royalties and tier-based recognition, we are moving beyond the old idea of loyalty and creating a new model where influence, consistency, and network value are recognised with purpose. Again, Platinum Members sit at the heart of this change. They are not just high spenders. They represent the audience every premium venue wants more of – influential, socially connected guests who can help move demand and strengthen the venue’s position in the market.
How are premium venues in Dubai starting to approach repeat guests differently now?
FIRSTLINE is built on the belief that repeat guests should no longer be treated as a general database. In premium hospitality, they are one of the strongest commercial assets a venue has. The next step for operators is to understand guest patterns with much more precision. Who returns with consistency? Who brings the right crowd? Who influences others? Who responds to recognition? Who creates value beyond their own visit?
Premium venues in Dubai are entering a stage where intuition alone is not enough. The future is structured recognition – combining personal service, SevenRooms data, royalties, network influence, and commercial impact into a clearer view of guest value.
What kind of insights are restaurants able to get about their guests through a model like this?
A reservation platform can already show important guest information such as visit history, spend, preferences, and booking behaviour. FIRSTLINE adds the layer that most operators do not currently have: network response.
Through FIRSTLINE and its bespoke CRM, venues can understand whether a guest’s visibility is influencing others, whether their network is reacting, and whether that attention is converting into actual visits. This is the part that traditional restaurant systems usually cannot capture clearly. That gives operators a much deeper view of guest value. It is no longer only about what one guest spends. It is about the commercial movement created around that guest – their influence, their network, and the demand they help generate.
Where do you see guest loyalty heading over the next few years, especially in a market like Dubai?
Guest loyalty is moving towards recognition, intelligence, and measurable influence. Generic points and mass rewards will not be enough for premium markets like Dubai. Dubai is often a market that influences the wider international hospitality scene. What works here can quickly become relevant globally, especially when it comes to premium dining, lifestyle behaviour, and guest experience.
FIRSTLINE is built with that ambition. We see it becoming a global hospitality network – bringing together operators, Platinum Members, social dining behaviour, royalties, reservation integration, and measurable acquisition into one premium ecosystem. Loyalty will no longer sit on the side of hospitality. It will become one of the ways demand is created, understood, and moved. For us, the future is not about giving more away. It is about recognising better, measuring smarter, and helping venues unlock the value of the guest network they already have.
For partnership enquiries, venues can contact: partners@firstlinevip.com.