Hotel Loyalty Programs

• Customers sometimes feel that rewards take too long to be seen as a result of the time it takes to earn points.

Examples of Hotel Loyalty Programs

Marriott Bonvoy

•  Marriott Bonvoy is a loyalty program which was recently formed by combining three royalty programs to form one. These are Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), Marriott Rewards, and Ritz-Carlton Rewards.
• This program gives customers more options to choose where they'd like to stay and includes staying at luxury hotels from 6900 hotels, 29 brands and 130 countries.
• 10 points can be earned per dollar spent in booking, while other ways to earn can be through car rental, and additional purchases besides the room.

Wyndham Rewards

• Wyndham Rewards loyalty program offers flat-rate redemptions which is applicable across the 8,000-plus properties for the company, once customers earn 15,000 points.
• Customers can earn 10 points for every dollar spent with the hotel or they can earn 1,000 points for each stay at the hotel.

World of Hyatt

• World of Hyatt's loyalty program is considered somewhat complicated as it has four tiers, namely, Member, Discoverist, Explorist, and Globalist (from the lowest to the highest level). The customer's level increases with the number of stay.
• All customers earn 5 points per dollar for purchases withe the hotel while there is a discount added in increments of 10% based on the tier the customer is at (i.e. Discoverist — 10%, Explorist — 20%, and Globalist — 30%).

Marketing tactics

• Hotels might choose to use more direct language to gain the attention of customers. Wyndham Rewards is recognized for its straight-forward language.
• The hotel also used a series of Wyzard Wyzdom videos to provide the details surrounding its 4-tiered loyalty program. It also used an actor from the popular TV series “Game of Thrones” to convey the details in the character of a wizard.
• Hotels such as The St. Regis Mexico City have started to use social media (messages) to engage customers in a more direct manner. For example, a customer was contacted on Instagram about their meal at The St. Regis Mexico City and was rewarded with an offer of "an exclusive meeting with a mixologist".
•  Other tactics include making perks valuable, integrating reward systems since customers are keen on earning rewards, providing unique experiences, consistently promoting the hotel's services, listening to customers and using new technology (e.g. loyalty apps).