What: Lotte Department Store is launching "Avenuel Global Trip", a programme of luxury cruise holidays reserved for its Avenuel VIP members.

Why it is important: By crediting travel purchases towards Avenuel tiers, Lotte makes non-retail spending a lever for retaining its highest-value customers.

Lotte Department Store is introducing "Avenuel Global Trip", an overseas travel programme for members of its Avenuel VIP membership, centred on luxury cruises. All three launch itineraries use the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, combining time on board with experiences at each port of call.

The first products cover an eight-night, ten-day Alaska trip from Vancouver, with glacier viewing, wildlife observation, business-class flights and a stay at a Fairmont hotel; a ten-night, eleven-day gastronomic route from Tokyo through Shimizu, Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka to Busan and Jeju, timed for the cherry blossom season; and a Mediterranean package exploring Gaudí's architecture and local culture in Spain and southern France.

Service extends before and after the trip, with one-on-one concierge planning, home-to-airport butler transfers, and gifts and on-trip credits of up to $1,000. Bookings are made through an exclusive tab in the Lotte Department Store app, open to Avenuel Orange to Black tiers. Travel purchases count at 100% towards Avenuel qualification, within an annual limit of 100 million won.

The launch follows the reorganisation of Avenuel Point into Avenuel Curation, which offers lifestyle content through more than 100 partners across six fields, including luxury hotels, fine dining, golf and leisure.

IADS Notes: The Avenuel Global Trip is the concrete execution of a strategy Lotte set out at the start of the year, when it announced that its VIP programme would shift towards curated benefits in luxury travel, fine dining and wellness, built with hotel and Michelin-starred partners (Maeil Business Newspaper, January 2026). The move fits a wider reorganisation of Korean department stores, where Hyundai, Shinsegae and Lotte are restructuring stores and teams around lifestyle experiences rather than product categories (The Chosun Daily, February 2026). Outside Korea, Manor has used cardholder benefits to give customers access to the Locarno Film Festival through dinner, red-carpet access and reserved seating (press release, August 2026), while Harvey Nichols reworked its loyalty tiers in step with its experiential repositioning (Fashion United, January 2026). With points and tiers now standard across the industry, differentiation increasingly comes from services anchored in customers' lifestyles rather than from the transaction itself (Customer Experience Dive, September 2026).

Lotte Department Store launches luxury cruise travel programme for Avenuel VIP members