Priority Club attacking HHonors – the gloves come off

Posted by Seth on February 3, 2010 under News, frequent flyer, points | 4 Comments to Read

Frequent traveler loyalty programs often like to subtly point out their advantages over competitors.  Whether it was bragging about no blackout dates back in the day (most programs offer that these days) or pointing out variations in upgrade policies, raising the differences help the programs differentiate themselves and attract customers.  The comparisons are generally rather passive; no need to outright attack the other programs. 

Priority Club, the frequent guest program for Holiday Inn, Intercontinental and several other brands, has decided to skip the subtlety with their latest promotion.  They’re attacking Hilton’s HHonors program with a full frontal assault and they aren’t shy about it at all.  The promo is titled “The Luckiest Loser.”  It goes after Hilton’s recent rewriting of their reward charts where, on average, the value of HHonors points dropped about 20%.  Priority Club is offering folks who are feeling a bit jilted by the devaluation an opportunity to get some of those points back in the form of Priority Club points.  Here’s how the promo works:

• We’ll automatically "give you back" 1,000 Priority Club points
• If you’re one of the top 20,000 "Lucky Losers," you will gain back up to 20% of your current HHonors balance in Priority Club points (up to 20,000 points)
• If you’re "The Luckiest Loser," you’ll win 2 million Priority Club points

It is a pretty smart promo in terms of what they are offering and generating some buzz.  And the way they are going after HHonors directly is definitely more aggressive than programs have been in the past.  It will be interesting to see if this sort of aggressiveness carries over to other programs.

Read more on the Priority Club promo here.