The ENTERTAINER is a renowned, Emirati born company and a major historical player in the Middle East. Founded and established as a redeemable coupon booklet in 2001; it transitioned from a print publication in 2013 to a data-driven company with the launch of its award-winning app – the ENTERTAINER. In 2017, the business became 100% digital.
What is the potential and future of lifestyle and technology sectors in the Middle East for you, and what is your point of view on expansion in new areas?
“Although we have been an established company since 2001, we continue to embody the authentic spirit of a startup,” says Ahmed Gaber, CEO at the ENTERTAINER. Having a startup mentality can be beneficial for many companies for several reasons. It can help them keep up with innovations in the market and capitalise on disruptive technologies, which can lead to the development of new products, services, and business models.
It can also drive a more agile and creative culture, which can help companies stay ahead of the competition and better respond to changing customer needs. Additionally, it can foster improved collaboration and communication among teams within the company, enabling them to work together more effectively. It can also help improve employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity, leading to overall business success.
At the ENTERTAINER, we don’t believe in limiting ourselves. Whilst our popular lifestyle app still lies at the core of our business model, we have simultaneously been focusing on our fast-rising, hidden gem – the ENTERTAINER business, which consists of the corporate side of our company. Here, we specialize in building loyalty and engagement apps, long-term partnerships with a strong focus on four segments in particular – government entities, banking, retail and telco.
The next evolution of digital experiences is knocking on the door, and we are here for it! From a competitive standpoint, we are unmatched. We offer Technology as a service (TaaS) solution to our clients with the help of our dedicated in-house Tech team consisting of 100+ highly qualified engineers. We also provide a range of amazing offers, experiences, and discounts. Additionally, our marketing services enable our B2B clients to establish a robust and quantifiable connection with their customer base.
Essentially, we’ve become an integral part of our customers’ lives and their daily activities over the years. Be it – dining in/out, pet care, dry cleaning, spas, fitness, staycations, attractions and leisure or even while traveling, the ENTERTAINER helps people do more for less. Thereby, ensuring financial inclusivity. We immerse ourselves in the entire lifecycle of our consumers’ lifestyle.
In addition to the existing pillars of our business, we are working towards adding two more solid layers to our platform – payments and AI. In order to achieve this, you need to have the right people, culture, and a positive environment to operate in – thankfully, we are very lucky to have a team that is fully committed to this strategy.
Consumer behaviour is constantly shifting and evolving. Over the next couple of years, we anticipate that there’ll be a strong focus on the travel and delivery industry. Therefore, we have already set a strategic plan into motion to further leverage this to our advantage.
The trend of implementing a hybrid and omnichannel customer journey is on many agendas today, and it is one of the prospects that markets are testing – how do we go outside of the real-world boundaries within the comfort of our own homes and experience, select, examine, learn, purchase, and do many other things.
With a brighter economic outlook in MENA compared to other economies, brands are recommended to be on the lookout for innovation and digitalization of experience, as consumers’ purchasing power and optimism will only grow. Loyalty of these customers will become the most valuable market artefact, and the developing trends will become aides for improved customer retention.
Surely, these consumers will still be affected by the global post-pandemic recovery trends, the predicted recession and become more price sensitive, as well as make weighted decisions. Another primary motivator for the consumer would be convenience – more products and services in one place, at the same time, at the best price, ideally with a deferred payment option – remember, excessive inflation?
Last year alone, our members saved $100M+ thanks to the ENTERTAINER app.
With the efforts of the GCC countries and diversification away from an oil dominated economy, spending will be increased in some priority sectors, including leisure. The F&B industry is also rapidly evolving, and cafes as well as restaurants are facing one of the hardest challenges yet – how to understand and anticipate their customer taste and mood, provide convenience and eliminate the time consumed by having to decide where to go or what to eat. Here comes her majesty – data! And voilà, we can now spot the demand for healthier, sustainable and nutritious food.
One of the lifestyle trends imposed by COVID is the developed habit of consumers to eat at home more. F&B outlets had to up their game, transform their supply and distribution channels through digitalization of experience. According to Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry – the trend of food delivery is here to stay with F&B sales reaching $619M by 2025 ($412M in 2020) in Dubai.
Coming back to the price sensitivity – now consumers must weigh their decisions and strike the perfect balance between eating in and out, and here is where the ENTERTAINER comes in handy and supports these decisions on both fronts. This is called a Q-commerce trend – I’m sure you noticed that more brands are now adopting the subscription model – those who have the most favourable terms with their offering have a guaranteed customer stickiness.
Sustainability is another important aspect – when you eat at home you become more conscious about the origin of your food, think about the difference it makes to your wellbeing, question the environmental impact made by the food production.
How diverse is the current share of your business in the Middle East, in B2C and B2B sectors?
We offer various memberships across all the GCC markets, covering residents and tourists, providing them with the broadest range of dining, social, leisure, adventure, retail and travel offers available. The most popular and beloved categories among our members include fine dining, spa, and theme parks.
We have recently launched a leaner product suite, which provides more flexibility for our customers as well as caters for various tastes. Our products are perfect for travellers, short stay visits, and GCC residents. An exclusive value proposition (not available on general sale) is promoted via our partners.
We began our journey in the UAE and we are expanding to various markets in the following two years. Our members can take advantage of our famous 2-for-1 offers without leaving the house, as the ENTERTAINER has a dedicated Delivery service as well. We have over 200 gourmet (F&B) merchants and more than 150 Body merchants – such as spas, etc.
For those who enjoy pool and beach clubs or are frequent gym goers, we offer Soleil, a premium product, where one annual fee provides you with access to a superb range of gyms, beaches and pools. This is a really great way to spend your leisure time and de-stress. Families love the convenience and flexibility it offers – mums and dads can stay fit in the gym during the week and take the children to their favourite luxury resort over the weekend for some quality time.
We are currently redesigning the user journey for Soleil to make it even easier to use and expanding our locations too. You can purchase the ENTERTAINER online, and we will be re-introducing physical app card purchases, so you can pick it up at your convenience and even gift it to others. We’ve ensured that there is something for everyone!
The ENTERTAINER business is a leading provider of loyalty and rewards end-to-end solutions for businesses in the Middle East. Our services include White-label and Rewards Apps, Customer Loyalty Programs, Card Linked Offers (CLOs), Managed Services, Data Analytics, CRM, and Customer Engagement. Our goal is to help businesses of all sizes to succeed in engaging their customers, building strong relationships, and driving growth.
Over the past 10 years, the ENTERTAINER business has worked with a wide range of clients across various industries, including retail, hospitality, banking and finance, education, real estate, government, and many more. Our clients include renowned brands such as HSBC, Al-Futtaim Group, Mastercard, Vodafone Qatar, Omantel, Doha Bank, Saudi Tourism Authority, Samsung, and many others. Our customers in the Middle East have made over 9+ million redemptions and saved an estimated amount of more than AED 500 million, through white label and rewards solutions alone.
We are also very proud to be an authentic and highly secure company in pioneering the Card Linked Offers (CLOs) technology and in-app payments post successful launch with Visa in February 2022. This allows customers to earn points when they make a purchase with a participating merchant and redeem these points via various schemes. Post successful implementation with some B2B clients we are now introducing this technology to our B2C consumers in the near future.
Our white-label and rewards apps are fully customisable and tailored to meet the unique needs of each client. We provide a range of tailored customer loyalty programmes to incentivise loyal customers and foster repeat business. We also offer loyalty management systems that provide businesses with tools they need to design, launch, and manage effective loyalty programs.
Our managed services are designed to help businesses streamline their operations and free up time for more strategic activities. We provide data analytics tools to track customer engagement, reward redemptions, and overall programme performance.
As part of our revenue diversification strategy, we have recently launched Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) models with telecom operators, where the ENTERTAINER B2B products are being charged directly to their monthly mobile bill.
With a track record of innovation and outstanding customer service, the ENTERTAINER business is the partner of choice for businesses in the Middle East. The ENTERTAINER has a physical presence and resources in every GCC country and is steadily expanding in countries with relevant potential like Egypt.
In Egypt, we’re starting off from a strong position where we have the backing of a major government entity – Egypt Post. This will help us to reach a versatile customer base with various segments. Egypt has the highest population compared to other countries in the GCC and taking into account the current economic events, the ENTERTAINER’s offering is very relevant. The loyalty and rewards market (B2B) is underpenetrated in Egypt which presents a great opportunity for the ENTERTAINER to rapidly gain market share.
Initially, we plan to cater for major government entities, bank and financial institutions, and telcom providers in Egypt. We will also be focusing on growing our KSA business through product innovation and key partnerships to increase brand awareness, engagement and revenue. On the B2B side of the business, we are branching out to various industries to help increase revenue and decrease concentration risk.
What is the projected future growth of the company, and what strategic decisions are being made to achieve it? Can you provide any insight without revealing figures?
In the current global and geopolitical situation, it’s not easy to commit to a long-term plan and strategy as things can change in a blink of an eye. Hence, as a company we always maintain three types of planning – short, mid and long term.
Having mentioned the above, there are some constants which will continue (but it might change, for instance, consumption can fluctuate) such as, the basic needs of people including food, retail/fashion, travel, etc. Hence, geographical expansion and diversifying our business lines are essential for continuity and growth. We are targeting 25% growth in some areas of the business and geographical locations while also, targeting and achieving more than 100% growth in other areas and some geographies.
For example, we are geographically expanding to Egypt and growing our investments in KSA. On the B2B and B2C side, we are adding additional business lines and revenue drivers like CLOs, in-app payments, delivery and partnerships.
What are the plans for expanding geographically in KSA and Egypt?
The ENTERTAINER operates in three major regions in KSA, serving both B2C and B2B customers. Through our strategic and affiliate partners we are expanding our presence to include other cities and tourist destinations such as Abha, Asir, and Alula.
In Egypt we are going live in Cairo, Giza and Alexandria and plan to expand to other areas, such as the Red Sea and Sharm El Sheikh. Additionally, Egypt has a solid tourism industry, with more than 13 million tourists visiting the country and we’re also planning to penetrate this market segment.
Are there any potential partnerships on the horizon for the company, without specific names?
The first question we ask ourselves when we scout and explore potential partners is: What is the opportunity or problem statement that will drive this collaboration? Can we bilaterally expand our product offering and provide a greater value to our customers? At the ENTERTAINER, we execute our growth strategy and increase the addressable market size through the alliances we strike. Merging expertise, capabilities, technologies and perspectives is a great way for the businesses to scale.
With an effort from the GCC countries to move away from an oil dominated economy, the tourism industry is flourishing, and our current partnership focus is to capture and benefit from this massive opportunity. In relation to our ecosystem – we select our partners carefully – ensuring that we catch tourists along multiple aspects of their journey – trip planning, transportation, accommodation, and connectivity.
We want our partners to provide a meaningful added value to their customers and enable tourists to discover the GCC at a new level. This is a new value proposition for us, and we are planning to evolve it across multiple technology parallels, such as bundled services, booking experiences, payments, and data analytics.
What is the strategy for growing the existing business in the Middle East, particularly in the travel and delivery sectors?
We are serious about expanding the reach of our popular Delivery offers. The first step is to double down on the infrastructure to ensure the best delivery experience and improved customer service. We have partnered with one of the largest last mile delivery providers, which will expand our coverage and allow more members to benefit. It will increase the speed of delivery and quality of service.
A successful integration to Deliverect has made a big difference to our merchants, enabling them to manage the orders more efficiently. Similar integrations with other aggregators are part of our future roadmap and will ensure a seamless delivery process. Once our delivery proposition is enhanced, we will scale the delivery business to our B2B clients and roll out this service in other locations.
Whilst F&B has always been the staple of the ENTERTAINER, renewed focus will land on leisure, attractions and travel. With an objective to become the Leading Personalized Lifestyle Experience Platform – we envisage lucrative opportunities in Travel.
The ENTERTAINER has partnered with a number of hotels in the UAE, gaining commission income from travel activities, although we are looking to create an all-encompassing value proposition for hotels. Tourism across the GCC counties is growing and the ENTERTAINER has an advantage to connect the location hubs and users via the app, so that travellers can plan budget friendly trips.
Are there any new products or segments that the company is exploring in the Middle East, and are there any untapped opportunities in the market?
In business, the fabric of digital transformation is much like the principles of Darwin’s Evolution, we must constantly change to survive. At the ENTERTAINER, our product proposition changed over the years from being a book full of vouchers to now becoming a digital subscription with incredible value – this is a commendable transformation for a short period of time, we can’t stop here! In 2023, the product has three key propositions which we aspire to excel at
- ‘Experience’ as a product – Experience is an emotion. The strongest emotion, love, is not garnered through profitable ideas; then how must ‘businesses’ strive to be loved by their customers? At the ENTERTAINER, we are on a mission to find a way. Whether it is spending lesser time in a queue or speeding up transactions, everything must matter.
- Engagement Products – Engagement within the realm of apps is centred on the level of immersion and interaction that users experience with the app. By incorporating features such as bespoke content, gamification components, social features, and frequent updates we will strive to boost user retention and generate revenue.
- Transactions – The boldest transition in 2023 will be our venture into the fintech space by empowering users with an integrated payment experience.
Learning from the Legend of Icarus, we must always keep our ambitions in check; knowing how quickly to innovate and not flying too close to the sun. As technologies like the metaverse, live commerce and other innovations slowly gain momentum, perhaps the greatest challenge for any business would be knowing when to evolve.
How is the company planning to rely on AI to improve its operations and service offerings in the Middle East?
As the digital revolution rushes to achieve true AI and Singularity – firms around the world in search for profitability are striving to find how AI can help. Our imagination of how AI will help us, is to better understand the most complex subject of human behaviour.
Plato believed that human behaviour flows from three main sources – desire, emotion and knowledge. Social media apps have leveraged ancient wisdom and so far, championed the art of driving desire, emotion and knowledge by engaging users more than ever before.
At the ENTERTAINER though, we would like to be a bit bolder and help users not just in the paradigm of enticing longer in-app sessions but using AI to augment everything around a user i.e., lifestyle. The ENTERTAINER has a unique advantage of understanding user behaviour in context of a real-world marketplace. As we harvest user desire, emotion and knowledge as digital footprints, we will soon be able to predict personalized taste buds, cravings and many other aspects of human social behaviour.
Our goal, for example, is not just to be able recommend gourmet coffee to the right user but recommend venues with live jazz music where his friends are visiting on Saturday. As the world frenzies to grasp how AI changes societies, the firms that end up leading the race are the ones that best understand us humans as complete social creatures.
What is the approach to balancing rapid changes and trends and customer retention in the Middle Eastern market?
The ENTERTAINER products are constantly evolving. We never stop analysing the quality of our product and offering in the various markets. Our goal is to become the essential everyday companion lifestyle app for our users. Our merchant selection and offers catalogue is constantly being enhanced, and we make sure that we are adding new offers to bring even more value to our subscribers.
Customer retention is key. Our members acknowledge the saving potential with our app and become advocates of our brand. Recently, we launched a freemium tier of the product, a sneak peek of our complete product offering. This allows us to target untapped customer segments.
In addition, we have moved to an auto-renewal subscription model which helps us to address churn. By implementing the right tools and infrastructure, such as advanced data and engagement platform, we are able to keep up with the rapid changes in the market and pivot opportunities, when necessary.
Purchasing a product that addresses a real concern of balancing ‘going out’ versus saving money, and helps people maintain or attain a lifestyle that they want, makes sense for customers, especially in the post-pandemic era. As a lifestyle product, the ENTERTAINER really is a no-brainer! Users normally save a minimum of 2.5 x the cost of a subscription. Our role is to remind them and serve them the right content at the right time.
How does the company’s leadership team plan to build a motivated team and unlock its true potential in the Middle East market?
A lot of companies lost a large portion of their top talent during the pandemic, yet we were still able to retain some of our exceptional talent at the ENTERTAINER. We are always on the lookout for the best talent in the market. We have the most amazing, committed and motivated team across 10 countries globally.
From a corporate perspective, as we build traction and see our results, we are beyond committed and enthusiastic to the cause. Our HR perspective is to ensure the basics are done properly and communicated thoroughly. From a clear strategy and plan, through to the communication and empowerment of this responsibility to people that we hired right – who in themselves are incredibly inspiring leaders and onboard with the requirement and complexity of essential organisational change.
We have capable leaders with proven experience and the entrepreneurial drive to use creativity and find ways to ensure execution happens swiftly and purposefully. 2023 is an exciting time for us, as we embark on new projects, new revenue streams and new ways of working. We are engaged with our culture of change and purpose.
The Middle East is an attractive and viable destination for globally-minded and high-calibre talent seeking to live and work abroad. This means there are opportunities abound for talented professionals to engage in rewarding and meaningful roles.
We find high tier talent and implement Learning & Development for all employees globally. However, in the Middle East specifically we find that it is easier to acquire talent due to the number of upskilling programs being run in the region. Aside from its job market and economic advantages, the GCC region also boasts an incredibly rich cultural diversity. Plus, its central location provides easy access to the rest of the world, making it a great destination for global job-seekers, who can enjoy the best of both worlds within reach.
To summarise, the Middle East and the GCC region, in particular provide a unique and rewarding opportunity for talented professionals who want to experience a vibrant, multi-cultural and exciting lifestyle. While, simultaneously taking advantage of meaningful career opportunities in the region. All of these factors make the Middle East an attractive destination for highly talented individuals, who can make the most of their skills and experiences and implement them into their professional lives in the Gulf.
At the ENTERTAINER, everyone has a voice, and they are encouraged to contribute and speak openly with clear feedback. This ensures that we have the strongest, most engaged and connected team possible. Trust is the key.