A new consumer survey by JD Power and Associates found that only about 30 per cent of travellers demonstrated "strong loyalty" to a hotel chain when they travel. Among those surveyed, 36 per cent of people said they were likely to stay at the same hotel more than once, 33 per cent said they were likely to recommend a hotel they liked and 24 per cent said they were likely to stay at the same hotel chain.

Analysts said the degree of loyalty for hotels was surprisingly low especially given the emphasis operators had placed on such programmes in recent years. Hotels, however, countered that the loyalty numbers showed their programmes were driving a growing volume of repeat business.

The number was particularly low compared with the degree of loyalty for airline frequent-flier programmes, said Chase Burritt, national partner of hospitality advisory services at Ernst & Young.

Comparable statistics for the airline industry were not available from JD Power, but a recent survey by United States-based Inside Flyer magazine found 91 per cent of people said that they would not remain loyal to their airline without frequent-flier programmes.

"Hotel customers are still driven by location more than they are strictly by brand," Mr Burritt said. "They're more interested in being located close to their plants, or in the right block within a big city."

Mr Burritt cited himself as an example of a frequent traveller whose brand loyalty is not a major factor when he chooses his hotels.

"That would compare to my airline travel, which is strictly American (Airlines)," he said. "I would move my dates, my times, would even take a second leg (on a flight) to take American. That's not because American is such a great airline, but because of the (frequent flier) points."

Commenting on the research, Noel Dooley, VP Product Marketing at Amateo, said the findings merely proved what he had seen in practice for many years, a loyalty programme simply isn enough. Establishing a scheme and recruiting guests to join is not the end of the process, just the beginning. Once you have enticed guests to join, that is when the real work and benefit begins.

schemes allow you to garner more information about your guests preferences and this needs to harnessed to customise your offering to them. Simply presenting a generic hotel stay experience and expecting brand loyalty to automatically grow will never work.

solution has been to integrate our Amateo Affinity guest loyalty product with Amateo 360° marketing automation system to generate pro-active campaigns target at your loyalty club guest base. The results are vastly more successful compared with operating a loyalty club scheme in isolation , affirmed Mr. Dooley.

Amateo are leaders in Marketing Automation and Business Intelligence solutions for the hospitality sector. Amateo's Guest Relationship Optimisation product suite standardises historical guest data stored in multiple hotel property management systems and facilitates revenue generating applications including Amateo 360 (Marketing Campaign Automation), Amateo Portal (Reporting and Analytics)and Amateo Affinity (Loyalty/ Executive Club Schemes).

  back to listing