Club Carlson PR emailed me survey results on Americans’ attitudes to hotel loyalty programs: Findings from National Kelton Survey on Loyalty Habits.

This post provides my commentary to the hotel loyalty program survey findings.

21% belong to a hotel loyalty program.

1 in 5 people belong to a hotel loyalty program.

I think reasons for not belonging to a hotel loyalty program could be infrequent travel, preference for other accommodations like staying with friends and relatives, hostels, couchsurfing, camping, Priceline, Hotwire and online travel agency bookings like Expedia. Many travelers prefer independent hotels and B&B lodging.

Of the 21% who do belong to a hotel loyalty program, 3 of 5 belong to more than one program.

Gender Gap Read More…

April 2013 is a time of reassessment for many hotel loyalty program members. The sudden and dramatic changes to the structure of hotel rewards across five of the top ten global hotel loyalty programs in the first quarter of 2013 was an incredible amount of information to digest.

The changes in the opening months of 2013 comprise the biggest overall change in the hotel loyalty program industry over the past decade.  Read More…

Conde Nast Traveler Gold List 2013 is the annual list of best ranked hotels by CN Traveler readers. 47,000 participants in the Readers Choice survey selected about 500 of the world’s best hotels for the 2013 list. Hotels making the Gold List five consecutive years are designated Platinum Circle status. The Platinum Circle list has 182 slides of hotels.

The 2013 CN Traveler Gold List grabbed my attention when I saw Marriott had published the list on the Rewards-Insiders.Marriott.com forum site.

Dromoland Castle in County Clare, Ireland is a Platinum Circle member of the 2013 CN Traveler Gold List. Read More…

The hotel guest has one primary objective – a sense of getting good hotel stay value for the money paid. The goal of the traveler is to find hotel value for any hotel whether booked through Priceline, Expedia, or a major hotel brand website.

Elite member recognition as a frequent guest can tip the scale for sticking to a specific hotel loyalty program member hotel over other lodging choices. The benefits of being an elite member in a hotel program combined with rebates on the cost of rooms in the form of hotel points, free nights and airline miles offers added value to the frequent guest.

Elite is High Value Strategy for Hotel Stays

Hotel loyalty program elite status is the best way to upgrade your hotel life for less cash. You do not have to be top tier elite with 25+ hotel stays a year in a loyalty program to receive valuable benefits like free internet, free breakfast and room upgrades.

An $80 upscale hotel room bargain gets blown out of budget with a $40+ hotel restaurant breakfast charge for two. Internet access can set you back $10 to $25+ per night at many high-end hotels.

Survey of Hotel Loyalty Program Lower Elite Tier* Benefits

*nearly all these elite levels can be reached with as few as 25 hotel nights in a calendar year. Read More…

September is a transition month in promotions for several major hotel chains.

New promotions for September and October hotel stays have been announced by a majority of the major hotel chains, including Best Western Rewards, Choice Privileges, Club Carlson, Hyatt Gold Passport, Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest.

These promotions and more are listed below with links to Loyalty Traveler posts on each offer.

One of the projects I did in August is compile a table of all the airline partners for the Top 10 global hotel loyalty programs. New airline partners operating from Asia and the Middle East have been added this year to several hotel loyalty programs. InsideFlyer is adapting the table for the magazine’s October issue.

September 2012 hotel loyalty promotions Read More…

August is a transition month in promotion offers for several hotel loyalty programs. Most of the hotel programs will end their primary summer travel promotion during the next four weeks.

Hyatt Gold Passport and Marriott Rewards already announced their next major promotions for September and beyond travel.

• Ends August 15 – Choice Privileges 8,000 points after 2 stays.
• Ends August 19 – Best Western free night after 3 stays.
• Ends August 28 – Club Carlson 50,000 points for Park Plaza stay.
• Ends August 31 – Hyatt 2,000/2,500 bonus miles per stay.
• Ends August 31 – Marriott Rewards 2 stays = 1 free night certificate category 1-4 hotel.
• Ends September 3 – Priority Club 1,000 bonus points per night.
• Ends September 13 – Wyndham Rewards 4x points for stays 2 through 5.
• Ends September 30 – Hilton HHonors Double Points Mon – Thu (20 points/$1) or Triple Points Fri-Sun (30 points/$1)
• Already over for you? – SPG Nice Choice ended July 31 for members who choose the first three months of the promotion period. Other members will see this offer end August 31. I registered for the July 1 to September 30 earning period.

These promotions and more are listed below with links to Loyalty Traveler posts on each offer.

Read More…

The 4th of July holiday week resulted in low readership for Loyalty Traveler when the Hotel Promotions July 2012 Guide was published last Monday. Here is the list of the primary loyalty promotions currently offered by the major hotel chains. There are many ongoing promotions in several of the chains that can be seen in the full July 2012 Guide.

July 2012 promotions from Top Ten hotel loyalty programs:

Links to my Loyalty Traveler posts provide more detail and promotion analysis for each offer.

Most hotel loyalty promotions are two to four months in duration.

The easiest way to quickly see a list of all hotel loyalty promotions discussed on Loyalty Traveler is to check my Loyalty Traveler Facebook page. All Loyalty Traveler post links feed into Twitter and all my tweets feed into Loyalty Traveler Facebook.

Summer 2012 hotel loyalty promotions   Read More…

July 2012 promotions from Top Ten hotel loyalty programs:

Links to my Loyalty Traveler posts provide more detail and promotion analysis for each offer.

Most hotel loyalty promotions are two to four months in duration.

The easiest way to quickly see a list of all hotel loyalty promotions discussed on Loyalty Traveler is to check my Loyalty Traveler Facebook page. All Loyalty Traveler post links feed into Twitter and all my tweets feed into Loyalty Traveler Facebook.

Summer 2012 hotel loyalty promotions

Le Club Accorhotels - this Europe-based program officially changed its name from A|Club to Le Club Accorhotels on March 28, 2012. Accor Hotels offers a variety of global regional bonuses and rate discounts. The program tends to have regionalized rate and bonus points promotions. Read More…

The major offers from each hotel loyalty program are listed first. The number of asterisks from 1-5 indicates my rating for this offer with 4 or 5 being the best value offers in my opinion.

2nd Quarter 2012 promotions from Top Ten hotel loyalty programs:

Accor A|Club – this Europe-based program offers a variety of global regional bonuses and rate discounts. The program tends to have regionalized rate and bonus points promotions. There does not seem to be one major promotion for the second quarter at this time. A|Club still hasn’t switched to its name change announced in 2011.

Read More…

The second post in comparing the mega-chain hotel loyalty programs of Hilton, IHG and Marriott is a look at earning points and miles in each program. These three hotel chains are grouped together for comparative purposes based on their size, each hotel chain with more than 3,500 properties worldwide and a significant proportion of upscale to luxury hotels.

The first post in this series outlined the number of hotels in each chain’s brands and their brand market segments.

The primary competitive advantage of Marriott, IHG and Hilton in the hotel industry is their size with global geographic coverage as well as extensive coverage of the United States. Starwood, Hyatt and Carlson hotels will be compared in a separate series of posts for these hotel chains with 500 to 1,200 hotels globally. France-based Accor Hotels is another large global hotel chain with over 4,000 hotels worldwide, however, the chain has fewer than 20 hotels in the U.S. participating in the Accor loyalty program and is excluded from this survey.

Earning Points and Miles from Hotel Stays

Two factors differentiate hotel loyalty program stays from stays booked outside hotel loyalty programs on sites like Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity:

• complimentary hotel loyalty benefits received during the hotel stay like free room upgrades, free internet access, hotel executive lounge access, free fitness facilities access, free breakfast and late check-out.
• points and miles earned from hotel stay are a rebate on the purchase price for the hotel stay.

These two factors are the area of competition between the major hotel chain loyalty programs. This post compares points and miles earning in Hilton HHonors, IHG Priority Club and Marriott Rewards. Separate posts will compare the hotel stay benefits of loyalty programs at different elite levels.

Earning Points

The rebate value of hotel loyalty programs is the factor that keeps many of us loyal to specific hotel chains. A good hotel loyalty promotion means the cost of a hotel stay is partially or fully rebated in the form of points earned from the stay.

Read More…