Major hotel chains invest largely to get more customers to join their loyalty programs. Loyalty and rewards programs can be among the most efficient mechanisms for marketing your hotel, but getting there requires thinking a bit differently about what customer loyalty is — and how it’s rewarded. These six tips are great to build customer loyalty in hotel industry:
Tip #1: Personalise
Different customers value different types of rewards. Leisure travellers tend to be more cost-sensitive than business travellers, and may prefer discounts on their room rates — whereas business travellers might prefer an upgraded room. We now have the technology to track customer preferences and behaviour like never before, making customisable “loyalty paths” a practical option.
Creating membership levels that specifically target corporate travellers — your most profitable market segment, can help you deliver rewards that your corporate clients are more likely to value. For example, some corporate travellers may prefer extras that they can redeem while on business travel, such as spa services, so they can relax after a long day of meetings while others may prefer to take the points they earn during business travel and redeem them later for leisure travel. This practice helps in building customer loyalty in hotel industry.
Tip #2: Think Locally
Don’t overlook (or undervalue) local individuals whose loyalty can drive repeat business. Local meeting and event professionals build long-term relationships with hotels in their area — and it’s definitely worth your consideration. Whether it’s launching a “planner points” reward system or a big-item raffle for your most loyal planners, your hotel can benefit greatly from finding ethical and contractually compliant ways to reward these professionals for their customer loyalty.
Likewise, building relationships with local establishments — like restaurants, boutiques, concert venues, etc. — can help you vary the types of rewards that you offer your loyal customers.
Tip #3: Think Beyond Points and Discounts
Loyalty isn’t all about points or miles. It’s about emotional, personal experiences — built in the short- and mid-term — that pay off in the long-term. The issue with room discounts is that they don’t provide much of an experience at all. Instead, you can offer your loyal guests a VIP service that’s more likely to leave a lasting impact, such as being picked up at the airport in a limousine.
Status symbols also have a high perceived value — the airlines have already caught onto this idea. For instance, First Class upgrades and early boarding are each seen as a valuable status symbol among many travellers.
Tip #4: Social Media
Social media hold enormous potential for brand identification and referral value. It’s also a place where loyal behaviours can be tracked and rewarded. Kelly McManus, director of guest experience at Hilton Worldwide, explains that low-level engagement on social media — such as “liking” a Facebook page or following on Twitter — can be valuable for hotels and should be rewarded. However, more intensive social media engagement, like writing positive reviews and posting hotel recommendations, can and should earn extra points.
Likewise, social media gives you new ways to reward your customers. Posting a personal message or a thank-you note to a loyal customer’s Facebook page or Twitter feed can provide a meaningful and personal experience. This practice is becoming a popular part of customer loyalty programs in hotel industry.
Tip #5: It’s All Fun and Games
The rise of social media and mobile technology has brought about another powerful trend — gamification. Gamification has advanced far beyond basic point systems, and hotels seeking to venture deeper into gamification need to expand both types of rewards they offer and the ways that customers can earn them. To learn how to gamify your loyalty programs, look up to the meetings and events industry, which has been very successful in using gamification to make meetings and events more engaging and interactive.
Tip #6: Experiment. Test. Be Patient.
Some might consider “Big Data” to be only a buzzword, but the ability to capture and analyse massive amounts of customer data makes it possible to test the efficacy of your hotel’s loyalty program more accurately than ever.
Don’t be afraid to test different combinations of rewards and customer segmentation — just make sure to measure the resulting behaviours. Try offering points for food and beverage purchases and reward loyal guests by waiving room-service fees. Your loyal corporate travellers might prefer to exchange their reward points for dry-cleaning services — or they might not. But you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment and see what works best in building customer loyalty in hotel industry.
Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that finding the best possible program for your hotel takes time. Certain types of customer loyalty, like brand advocacy and brand identification, is rarely reflected in short-term profits, and programs can take as long as three years or more to demonstrate ROI. However, in terms of long-term success, ROI may not be as powerful as ROE — return on engagement.
