Loyalty Card and Reward Program for Hotel Membership are important to push Guest fidelity. In challenging times, every revenue stream counts! Did you know that loyalty programs can account for 30% to 50% of all nights in the most successful hospitality businesses?
Now, for those the hotels that are still pondering, it’s time to add a valuable lever of extra bookings.
While some hotels are reluctant to take on customer loyalty programs, they can actually be an invaluable method for building customer loyalty and ensuring that your guests feel valued, rewarded, and ever ready to keep coming back for more.
There are many benefits to setting up a customer loyalty card scheme or another kind of rewards program. Not only does it strengthen your bond with customers but it motivates return business, gives you rich data to work with, and helps you to tailor your incentives and offerings to directly target your market.
Customer loyalty can be tricky but it’s not a dying breed. Forward-thinking hoteliers will already know that there are thousands of hotels out there. Securing a steady flow of repeat bookings is the goal of any hotel (both big and small), as is upping the chance for repeat business and maintaining great guest engagement. While many smaller or independent hotels may believe that loyalty cards and points rewards are only for the bigger brands and hospitality chains, they could be missing an amazing trick. A great customer loyalty app, a touch of creative investment, and the ability to recognize that your guests want to feel valued can all easily translate into repeat business and a loyal following.
Customer loyalty programs for small businesses can be an incredibly valuable way of channeling your resources. Studies show that it’s more expensive to engage and secure new customers than it is to keep an existing customer. For those looking at building customer loyalty, this guide can help to map out all you need to know about customer loyalty programs in hotels.
Building a Loyalty Card and Reward Program
HotelAppz makes building a loyalty card and reward program easy for your hospitality business. For those who want to effortlessly implement solid customer loyalty schemes, HotelAppz has the know-how.
Simply start by setting your customer loyalty program name and the expiration date. There are several different program names so you can pick the style of the customer loyalty program that suits your business. Whether you choose a membership program, a loyalty program, a club card program, or a reward program – the aim remains the same, keep customers booking and adding to their club membership card or equivalent to reap their rewards.
After you have set your style of customer loyalty program you can set the point conversion rule and the rewards that are available. This can be down to your unique hotel business discretion.
As a note, it helps to have different tiers or statuses set up as part of your rewards program. For example having a silver card, a gold card, and a platinum card will help to engage different styles of guests and ensure that the higher the level of loyalty, the higher the level of reward.
Loyalty Card, Reward Program, Club Card, or Membership Program: What is the Difference?
Despite the different terms of a loyalty card, club card, or membership program, the aim remains the same. Hotels that set up Clubcard points, Clubcard vouchers and any other kind of membership programs are all looking to reward guest loyalty and to encourage repeat bookings or repeat investment. Which model of rewards scheme you choose and how you market it can be tailored to meet your usual guest profile.
Loyalty Cards are aimed at those who spend a significant amount of personal time and resources investing in a brand. For example, these are your business travelers who keep coming back to your hotel. By offering them a loyalty card you are recognizing this choice to pick your brand.
Rewards Programs can be geared towards guests who are looking to earn credit to put towards future offerings from your hotel or business. They may want to collect points that add up to rewards that make a weekend away extra special or to cash in their points for an extra night free. This style of rewards can be great for families and couples who are looking for a chance to have their stay enhanced.
It’s still essential to treat your guest like an individual and to make the experience element of the loyalty scheme one of the most important factors. For hotels that want to keep that personal touch and attention to detail, the golden rule is that guest experience drives loyalty.
Building Customer Loyalty Programs
Building a customer loyalty program is easy when you have HotelAppz onboard to help iron out the creases. There’s a simple yet incredibly powerful formula for hotel loyalty management offered by the app.
The HotelAppz customer loyalty program will automate the rewards system based on points. You decide the rules of your program and the app works to integrate this into your system and to automate the setup. The app will tell you what status the customer has, how many points they already have, and will continue to add to the points every time it recognizes the data input. There’s also an easy one-click button for when a customer wants to ‘burn’ or use their points to claim rewards. Again, the points used will automatically be deducted from their profile.
This is where another big benefit of choosing loyalty programs and hotel rewards comes in – in collecting data. Customer loyalty programs allow you to easily collect essential customer data and to track your guests habits. You will be able to see which areas your guests prefer to cash in on their rewards – perhaps with spa treatments, restaurant vouchers, or room upgrades. By knowing which rewards serve as popular incentives for your guests, you are able to tailor your service for them to be personal and relevant – thus further enhancing guest loyalty.
Promote your Loyalty Program
Your new loyalty program can be an invaluable ROI method for keeping guests interested time and time again. It helps to keep engagement levels high when you ensure your program is dynamic and time relevant to encourage your customer loyalty schemes to remain interesting.
There are many customer loyalty program ideas you can turn to, and we have outlined a few snapshots to get you started.
Increase Your Guests Points
Surprise your loyal guests by increasing their points as an appreciation for their continuous commitment to the brand. This is especially thrilling for guests who are close to jumping loyalty scheme tiers (for example from silver card to gold card). Those who have a new level of points and who are able to receive a higher level of reward may be more willing to spend those points on their next trip.
Special Occasion Bonuses
Thanks to HotelAppz and the rich data that becomes available when your guests sign up for customer loyalty rewards, you will already have some personal data on file such as their birthday, etc. If you are aware of a special occasion coming up, one of the more personal customer loyalty program examples is to offer birthday bonus points for your guest to show how much you value them. You could also offer them incentive gifts to book the hotel – for example, a free dinner for two or a free spa afternoon could encourage the guest to book in for their birthday.
Low Occupation Bonus
Time-limited promotions can be an amazing way of boosting bookings during the low occupation periods or out of season bookings. This certainly provides food for thought when it comes to customer loyalty programs for small businesses who want to improve their booking rates. By offering to double the points of any guests that book during the time-limited period, this could easily help to drive bookings, revenue, and ROI.
Be Transparent When Communicating Your Loyalty Points Program
Guest loyalty is one of the most valuable assets your hotel has. It’s important to be incredibly transparent and clear when mapping out the terms and conditions of your points program and the benefits included. All members should be offered the chance to understand how to earn reward points and how to spend their Clubcard points. HotelAppz makes the whole process of defining and communicating the reward benefits as streamlined and simple as possible to keep the loyalty rewards program a positive experience for all.
Loyalty Program with Hotel’s Service
Your hotel is probably already brimming with amazing reward options that would be perfect offerings for your guest loyalty program. For example you can offer hotel points in exchange for room discounts, room upgrades, early check in or late check-out. You can also offer your guests the chance to swap hotel points for extra day stays, free parking, and WIFI at no extra cost. For those who have facilities on site such as a restaurant or wellness suite, you can also invite your guests to spend reward points on brilliant bundle offers that make for an amazing weekend away.
Loyalty Program For Hotel Restaurants, Bars, and Events
For those hotels who have their own in-house restaurant and bar area, you can also incorporate points exchange or hotel vouchers to be used in these areas to incentivize guests to keep coming back. As part of the loyalty points system, you can offer guests the chance to spend reward points on beautiful continental breakfasts, romantic dinners for two, or even free room service for business travelers. Again, if you have a bar then offering hotel vouchers for cocktails, welcome drinks, or even a bottle of celebratory prosecco can be just the nudge your guests need. The same goes for hotel events for those establishments who host special weekend escapes, themed evenings, and concert nights.
Hotel Points Program For Leisure Facilities
Utilizing your hotel services when it comes to your points rewards program is a business-savvy decision for encouraging and incentivizing guests. For those hotels who have a wellness center or spa suite on their property, you can offer your customers the chance to earn reward points that can be exchanged for spa therapies, discounted treatments, and even beauty and pampering gifts like luxury soap, body lotion, etc. This invites guests to fall in love with your spa services and perhaps to consider booking further treatments during their next stay. It also boosts the opportunities for them to rate and review your spa services and to spread the word on social media or by word of mouth to further build your profile.
Hotel Loyalty Programs with Restaurants, Local Guides, and City Events
For hotels who are keen to build mutually beneficial relationships with surrounding businesses and to work collaboratively when it comes to their guest loyalty programs, another method could be partnering with other hospitality sectors. For example, you could set up partnerships with different restaurants and tour guides or other tourist-centric businesses so that they are willing to accept your reward vouchers. This can work on a dually beneficial agreement as you can offer your guests restaurant reward points, events rewards, or even a double bundle reward to use in local businesses. Not only does this provide loyalty incentive bookings from guests, but it also feeds back into the local economy and can encourage further spending in restaurants, tour businesses, etc, along with the chance to grow the success of those companies you choose to partner with.
There are many ways to light a creative spark and to connect with local businesses and source local events. Check Eventbrite.com, meetup.com, Timeout.com, or even your local town hall website for ideas.
For hotels both big and small looking for new ways to equally encourage and keep guest loyalty, investing in an easy loyalty card, and rewards program for hotel membership is a low effort solution with a huge return on investment potential. All guests love to feel like they are getting a great deal and perks help people to feel valued.
Your hotel probably already has a whole series of loyal guests and by acknowledging them and paying homage to their commitment to you, you are further securing that ongoing relationship. HotelAppz can help you to build a mutually beneficial connection that can keep guests coming back (and sharing your name) for many years to come.
The main components of a loyalty program are pre-built in HotelAppz. You only have to fine-tune the points to be rewarded and the way to burn them.
The secret sauce of loyalty has been cracked, allowing a set-up in 1 month / 4 weeks.
Speed up your direct booking channels with an efficient loyalty program. Be able very soon to count a fair share of bookings coming back to you ! Potential can be as high as 30% of additional bookings or more.
