As increasing numbers of hotel guests sign up to hotel loyalty programmes, hotel groups are coming up with more uses for their members’ personal data. Hotelier Middle East investigates the benefits those loyalty programmes can bring, both to the guest and the hotel:
With hotel groups increasingly seeking to understand traveller trends and their own guests demands, it’s time the potential of loyalty programmes as a data gathering source was maximised. However, how do hotels balance rewarding their guests, with rewarding themselves?
While they have long been used by the hospitality industry as an effective tool for rewarding customers, building brand loyalty and increasing repeat business, hotel companies are now using modern data gathering techniques to build accurate, up to date and valuable customer databases.
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Hotel groups can then utilise the information garnered to accurately tailor marketing campaigns towards specific market groups, develop new promotions and offers and personalise every aspect of a guest’s stay, from the newspaper they like to read in the morning to what their favourite item is on the room service menu.
Rewarding Loyalty
One such hotel loyalty scheme that tries to make the most of guest data is the Fairmont President’s Club, which offers members a selection of benefits based solely around their personal profiles such as personalised room-preferences and welcome amenities. Also on offer are specially created experiences that are tailored around each member’s likes and interests such as Fairmont Moments and Passion Packages.
As Fairmont Raffles Hotels’ executive director of loyalty marketing Sharon Cohen puts it: “Loyalty programmes give both the customer and the hotel an opportunity to start a relationship.”
“Through a loyalty programme members are given a channel to communicate what is important to them, and as hoteliers we can use that information as a way to personalise a guest’s stay. That way we can ensure that our guests receive exemplary service at any of our hotels, wherever they are in the world,” says Cohen.
Cohen goes on to explain how the Fairmont’s President’s Club loyalty programme is built around collecting and understanding each individual member’s needs and travel preferences, and then using that information to offer “guest experiences that are less transactional and are unique and engaging while revolving around what they are passionate about.”
One example Cohen uses is during New York fashion week, when Fairmont was able to offer certain President’s Club members front row seats and private meet and greets with designers behind the scenes.
“It is these kinds of rewards, rather than revolving around discounts or rewards points, that helps the President’s Club to stand out from any rival reward schemes,” says Cohen.
The Fairmont President’s Club is a tiered system that is split into three levels based purely on the number of guest stays within a calendar year. The entry tier is complimentary to all hotel guests and offers benefits such as a dedicated reservation line and express check-in and check-out.
Once a guest has five stays or 10 nights at any Fairmont hotel they move up to Premier level, and can then move up to Platinum after 10 stays or 30 nights within a calendar year.
However, Cohen admits that one of the challenges that comes with this kind of tiered service, and one that affects all loyalty programmes to some degree, is how to identify relevant customer data, and how to use that data to communicate with its members in a relevant way.
“One of our major challenges is making sure that we spend our money on the right people,” says Cohen. “That is something we solve through a detailed customer segmentation process, so that we can understand where we are spending our money and whether it's on the right people.
“A customer segmentation programme also lets you identify the guest’s behaviour that you are looking to encourage. For example, there might be a guest who stays with you often, but might not have any particular loyalty to the brand because of a company contract. So you have to understand where you can win, and what customers you have to focus on, beyond the typical tiered segmentation system of a loyalty programme,” says Cohen.
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