Gearing up for the 2026 outing of NYU Worldwide Hospitality Funding Discussion board (IHIF) in early June in New York – maybe the biggest worldwide lodge funding convention on this planet – it’s important that we glance again at a number of the huge feedback shared by the highest brass from final 12 months’s occasion. Therein, one comment amongst keynotes and panelists was to level to the large progress of loyalty program membership numbers for the large chains as being synonymous with the expansion of “precise” loyalty (we’ll get to what precise means later).
To throw one quantity at you for reference, an April 2025 report from CBRE posted a cumulative viewers of 675 million lodge loyalty members worldwide in 2024 from amongst Marriott, Hilton, Wyndham and Alternative’s public filings, rising by 14.5% that 12 months and outpacing room progress by 6.7% for 137 loyalty members per room.
We now have a bone to choose with these numbers as a result of they’re worded in a means that assumes causation from correlation — that progress in loyalty program numbers signifies sturdy affinity to a selected home of manufacturers. As we regularly advise house owners on model choice, a false assumption based mostly on these figures may spell doom for any lodge that doesn’t select its model properly.
Towards Our Argument
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First off, know that NYU IHIF is splendidly informative and frequented by a number of the smartest minds in hospitality. We don’t imply to be absolute naysayers, merely cautious in the usage of combination statistics like these talked about above. In any case, hospitality is an business that relishes its nuances.
To state outright the arguments towards our speculation, there may be certainly sturdy worth to each house owners and friends for lodge loyalty applications. Homeowners get surety of distribution, operational customary working procedures, design assist, provide chain administration, midweek group contracts and a slew of different advantages. Friends get factors, perks, rewards and, above all, merchandise they will belief with aboard. We aren’t disputing this symbiosis.
However when studies come out that solely cite progress of complete membership and year-over-year throughout the large seven (Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Accor, Wyndham and Alternative), we ponder about enrollment overlap. How many individuals these days have two, three, 4 or extra loyalty program memberships?
To attract on some vernacular from one other wrench in our toolbox — lodge tech advisory — what’s actually wanted to resolve that is an identification decision database cleanse. If we had entry, we might begin by combining all of the loyalty member databases then performing an AI-driven, rules-based deduplication and profile match-and-merge, after which rating this consequence towards some type of sentiment evaluation and RFM (recency, frequency, financial worth) calculation.
What you’d doubtless discover is that the members per room determine can be means down after cleaning the information throughout all manufacturers. From the merged profiles, you’d additionally get a way of how many individuals have a number of accounts with every main chain (our hypothesis: it’s excessive) as an indicator of brand name agnosticism. And as a closing shocker, chances are you’ll discover from the emotional scoring of sentiment and RFM that there’s no statistically important relationship between enrollment and precise loyalty. On this case, we loosely outline “precise” as selecting a lodge for its model over and above different key drivers reminiscent of value and proximity.
A Third Variable
The underlying precept behind the scientific tenet of “correlation doesn’t equal causation” is that there could also be a 3rd variable at play which is influencing each measurements. On this case, we’re going to pose that the core issue driving loyalty program progress is none apart from the almighty and multifaceted energy of latest, quick, interoperable networked applied sciences.
Maybe apparent to only about everybody who isn’t residing in a cave, but it surely’s extremely simple to affix a lodge loyalty program nowadays. Therefore, it’s price taking a second to replicate on the items of tech which have gotten us up to now over the previous twenty years.
Take into account a number of the {hardware} and software program which have made this so frictionless:
Quick web connectivity with clever international server area allocation in order that prospects can question any lodge for any request at breakneck velocity from practically anyplace on the planet.
Cellular lodge loyalty program apps and responsive web sites that each one have nice GUIs (visitor consumer interfaces), making it a pleasurable consumer expertise to navigate via any of them whereas on the identical time producing no true standout from the pack.
Tokenized passwords, SSO (single sign-on), safe password storage functions and simple password restoration mechanics, that means that no buyer ever actually has to completely bear in mind their loyalty login info.
Linked on-premises techniques and databases that mechanically add loyalty factors in addition to easy on-line pathways to get better factors from a lacking keep, altogether requiring minimal power from friends to construct factors in a number of applications.
An armada of lodging consciousness and on-line distribution instruments which have opened friends’ eyes to the bevy of flagged, unflagged and alternate lodging choices at their disposal (OTAs, metasearch, Airbnb and so forth).
Total, it’s a breeze to enroll and keep enrolled. Why not be a part of as many applications as doable if there’s no work required to take action?
Given these 5 elements (and others), the cumulative progress of complete loyalty program membership seems to be much less of a testomony to the facility of loyalty applications and extra to the unstoppable progress of worldwide journey, in addition to the facility of the web in creating each hyperaware (and hyper-discerning) shoppers and a hypertrophy of manufacturers that may push affordability and attain friends at scale.
And since the web and social media are solely going to develop in scale and velocity, it’s debatable that vacationers have by no means been extra disloyal to 1 lodge model or one other. In any case, they’ve now innumerable choices throughout the globe, so why be beholden to just one chain or one area?
Some Manufacturers Get It
We’re hardly complete skeptics. We emphasised this “precise” loyalty for a motive past merely poking holes. What we see is robust and enduring loyalty to particular manufacturers inside a selected home of manufacturers.
Sure, this type of true loyalty skews towards luxurious and life-style, and also you wouldn’t be flawed. From our wheelhouse within the luxurious class, we will rifle off names of manufacturers which can be doing wonderful issues, like: 1 Lodges (Starwood), Andaz (Hyatt), Anantara (Minor Lodges), Design Lodges (Marriott), Version (Marriott), Fairmont (Accor), MGallery (Accor), Raffles (Accor), Six Senses (IHG) and The Commonplace (now a part of Hyatt). These are only a handful, and we’re excluding the smaller teams, collections, associations and smooth manufacturers that even have some distinctive product choices.
However then there’s a equally sturdy affinity for midscale and upscale manufacturers that mix a dependable rooms product with significant amenities and providers for the extra budget-focused or enterprise traveler. Some names listed here are CitizenM (now a part of Marriott), Even Lodges (IHG), Ibis Types (Accor), Graduate Lodges (now a part of Hilton), Mama Shelter (Accor) and Moxy (Marriott).
The purpose right here is that whereas we don’t belief the claims that loyalty program progress equates one to 1 with actual loyalty for one home of manufacturers over one other, we do belief that friends are certainly truly loyal to these manufacturers which can be genuinely extraordinary, no matter which fee class they might be categorized inside.
To combine and match from the abovementioned names, one visitor might design their dream trip to sure places in Southeast Asia based mostly across the presence of Anantara or Raffles properties whereas additionally particularly searching for out a Moxy or Ibis Types when touring to a gateway metropolis on a enterprise journey.
Identical particular person, completely different context, loyal to manufacturers however to not a singular home of manufacturers.
