Fairness for Hotel Loyalty Programs

Hotel frequent stay loyalty programs include:

• Marriott Bonvoy
• World of Hyatt
• Hilton Hhonor

discriminate against travel agencies, tour companies, meeting planners, and third-party sellers.

How?

• when booking member hotels, their clients will not earn reward points, and nights they stay in such member hotels will not count toward maintaining or increasing their status.
• when frequent travelers use a travel company or other third party to book a member hotel, they will not earn points, receive status nights or benefits when staying in a member hotel
• when attending a meeting or trade show in a member hotel or staying in a member hotel when booking a trade show organizer or meeting planner for the arrangements, the guest will also not earn points in member hotels or receive status nights.

Causing Issues:

In many cases, travel planners and guests are not aware of this. This causes issues in a provider-client relationship not only between the hotel and its frequent stay guests but also has the potential to destroy a relationship with the third provider, especially with SMEs and home-based agencies, threatening their ability to maintain clients and, in some cases, stay in business.

Secondly, it makes meeting planners and also trade shows or those conducting meetings look bad and lowers participation.

The World Tourism Network is calling on third-party providers, including meeting planners, not to do business with such hotels unless their clients specifically agree to forfeit their ability to earn points. World Tourism Network is calling on Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton to understand and respect the importance of Small and medium-sized travel agencies and to stop forcing their customers not to do business with such agents. WTN feels this is not only essential specifically for small third-party providers but also the reputation of hotels offering a frequent-stay program

Not giving expected benefits to their loyal guests has the opposite effect of loyalty. It is unfair, borders on fraud and misrepresentation, and fulfills. Such hotels should start seeing third-party providers as their clients and partners that generate business for them. They must stop seeing third-party providers as competitors.

For such hotels to punish their own frequent guests by withholding expected benefits will result in a loss of business and loyalty and generate bad feelings among everyone in the service supply chain.

World Tourism Network call is:

• For third-party travel providers, meeting planners avoid doing business with hotels participating in such discriminatory practices threatening their reputation, and punishing their mutual clients in the process.

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