Hotel loyalty schemes are a crucial element of the branded chains’ strategies, but they can come at a cost. This time next summer Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson will be hoping that a crucial element of last autumn’s $13 billion acquisition of rival Starwood Hotels – creating the world’s biggest hotelier in the process – will pay off in one key respect: the successful integration of the highly regarded Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) loyalty scheme with Marriott’s own Rewards program.
Adding SPG to Marriott Rewards will create a mega-loyalty scheme with 100 million members, Sorenson revealed in June at a New York investment conference. When integration takes place this will put Marriott on a par with Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), which claims to have the world’s biggest hotel loyalty scheme also with ‘around 100 million members’. The smart money is on Marriott taking pole position soon.
But it was not so much the scale of adding SPG’s members to its loyalty empire that appealed to Marriott, but the quality of its ‘elite’ frequent business travelers; especially in comparison to Marriott’s more mainstream guest base.
So much so, in fact, that Sorenson has not rushed into making significant changes in SPG – although Marriott and SPG members had their accounts ‘linked’ at an early stage following the corporate takeover, providing reciprocal equivalent status in both programs.
Pressure on loyalty schemes
The delay in integrating all the schemes also reflects the changing times for loyalty programs in the travel sector. Ever since American Airlines in 1981 launched the first serious loyalty scheme for regular airline passengers, most corporate travelers have traditionally found ‘free’ flights or upgrades more alluring than rather dull – and often over-complex – hotel loyalty schemes.
However, as flying has become more of a commodity-style experience for many – packed into ever-shrinking seats and forced to pay increasingly egregious fees for services previously included in the fare – so accumulating frequent-flyer miles has lost some of its luster. The airlines’ pivot towards rewards based on spend rather than miles flown, has also diminished their attraction, since the potential rewards can be far less.
The top hotel chains have also recognized that their traditional approach to earning the loyalty of frequent guests is losing traction. Rumbles of discontent about hotel programs being both confusing and too demanding in their redemption rules have gathered pace over the past few years.
At the same time, guest demographics are changing and, unsurprisingly, it is the rising millennial cohort who are fuelling the remake. A recent survey of more than 25,000 people across 33 countries by consultancy firm Accenture, entitled Seeing Beyond the Loyalty Illusion, suggested that millennials were more demanding and less loyal than any other group, especially as part of the ‘always-connected’ generation. Marriott has estimated that millennials will be its key customer base in the next decade.
“Millennials were also more likely to have switched hotel providers in the previous six months,” points out Umar Riaz, a managing director in Accenture’s Travel Industry practice in the US, adding that hoteliers should urgently seek “to curb this switching behavior”.
Chains up the game
Some of the big chains have recently been doing exactly that. Earlier this year Hilton revamped its long-standing loyalty scheme HHonors – dropping the clunky double-H and renaming it Hilton Honors. The hotelier, in case you missed it, also decided at the same time to rebrand itself as just Hilton rather than its previous nomenclature, Hilton Worldwide.
Hilton’s reboot of its Honors program addressed one common criticism of such schemes – that it takes too long to actually gain any rewards – by allowing members to choose a combination of points and money for a stay or other reward in the program. Helpfully, a new app on its website enables members to calculate what combination of both they will need to secure a room night or reward.
Hilton’s rivals have also been revamping their own programs this year. Choice Hotels, for example, has partly focused on giving its guests more immediate and frequent rewards, including discounts on petrol and credit with Amazon and Uber, for those in its Choice Privileges program.
This recently won it a special ‘Freddie Award’ – named after aviation entrepreneur Sir Freddie Laker – from European frequent travelers for the best ‘up-and-coming’ hotel loyalty scheme in Europe and Africa.
‘Soft’ rewards
Hyatt, meanwhile, replaced its long-standing and award-winning Gold Passport loyalty scheme with ‘World of Hyatt’, unashamedly designed to appeal to sophisticated, high-end frequent travelers.
It is extending its previous two elite tiers to three, and naming these (in ascending order) ‘Discoverist, Explorist and Globalist’, reflecting a focus on rewards being based around high-end exclusive experiences. Millennials, in particular, are often more interested in redeeming their accumulated points for an exclusive or luxury experience, rather than future hotel stays.
Corporate Travelers Matter
In Europe, a recent GBTA and Concur survey of business travelers in Germany, the UK and France, found that at least one-third of those questioned in each country had booked directly with a travel supplier despite 60 per cent having access to an online booking tool (OBT). The policy implications of this are spelled out by Concur executive vice-president Mike Koetting: “Unmanaged direct bookings can undermine travel program benefits, policy enforcement, duty-of-care obligations and supplier contracts,” he says.
Outgoing GTMC chief executive Paul Wait is also critical of the big hotel brands’ direct booking strategy by promoting their loyalty schemes. “Hoteliers need to have a keen sense of the benefits their loyalty schemes offer across each distribution channel and that these benefits are fair,” he says. “If not, they run the risk of alienating TMCs and the corporate buyer – which will be to their cost.”
Wait believes that the major hoteliers are “in danger of destroying their relationships with TMCs”, and urges them to consider alternative measures “such as reducing supply to the OTAs and taking a more specific and targeted action that does not affect the corporate buyer”.
He is supported by Adam Knights, UK managing director of travel management company ATPI Group, who argues that for hoteliers to operate effectively “they must consider the TMC’s value and expertise to deliver bookings and revenue – in short, a much more holistic approach to loyalty and rewards within the business travel community.”
Yet Knights also thinks the chain hotels are increasingly recognizing the benefits of working with TMCs in order to make more effective use of loyalty scheme membership. “For example, if a traveler stores their loyalty number in their corporate profile, the TMC can access both the website rate and also capture the benefits of the scheme, such as the discounts which can be earned,” he says.
Buyers should also be aware that TMCs still carry considerable clout when negotiating hotel deals for clients, suggesting an ability to achieve similar benefits to those offered to loyalty scheme members who book direct.
“Not only should there be a percentage discount off rack and best-available rates, but whenever possible additional benefits such as free wifi, breakfast, and so on, should be included,” points out Sonja Hamman, director of global strategic partners at Wings Travel Management.
Hotel loyalty schemes – tips for buyers
- Embrace hotel loyalty schemes positively as they can help maintain compliance with corporate travel policies, especially when major hoteliers combine programs across multiple brands (e.g. Marriott). Persuasion can often be more effective than coercion in achieving compliance.
- While airline loyalty schemes are formally included in most company travel policies, hotels have not always been given the same recognition as the rewards have been regarded as less significant. But now the increased benefits offered by many hotel chains raises their potential value to the corporate travel budget.
- Employee loyalty scheme profiles should be easily accessible to the travel buyer and TMC, so that the best rates can be automatically achieved along with the other benefits available. The data captured should be regularly assessed to ensure it meets policy targets.
- Be aware that some hotel chains are better than others at ensuring that special rates with loyalty benefits are available through negotiated managed program channels. Problems, especially with compliance, can arise when these channels are ignored.
- Don’t be dazzled by the marketing clout of the big hotel brands: sometimes loyalty benefits obtained with a budget chain or independent hotel group (such as free wifi, parking, and breakfast) can be more useful, especially for SMEs.
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