Barry Sternlicht rewrote the hotel loyalty playbook with SPG a couple of decades ago. His team’s latest attempt at hotel loyalty ditches significant parts of the formula, like tier status and free rooms.
The 1 Hotels brand, part of Sternlicht’s revived Starwood Hotels, has scrapped loyalty points for tree plantings and charitable donations.
As Skift exclusively reported Wednesday, 1 Hotels’ loyalty membership has doubled to 200,000 since July (when the changes debuted).
Members get a planted tree upon joining, and the brand donates 1% of spending to environmental groups.
To be sure, some of this is necessity dressed as virtue by 1 Hotels CEO Raul Leal.
With just 14 properties and 6 more in the works, 1 Hotels can’t compete with the vast footprints of major chains and their array of reward redemption options.
Yet, on the other hand, building community may be the way forward for programs of any size, given that many loyalty program membership rolls are full of inactive users. Average nights per loyalty member have fallen from 1.8 to 1.0 since 2016, even as membership has surged, according to a CBRE report this year.
Travelers join 15 travel loyalty programs on average, but engage meaningfully with few, according to Skift Research data.
By eliminating points entirely, 1 Hotels sidesteps this transparency problem. You get benefits right away from joining, not having to wait to get to a tier status.
There are a lot more details and nuances in this story, including on the community-building efforts and Starwood Hotels‘ CMO Toni Stoeckl‘s strategy. Read it on Skift’s site. And Skift Research Research has a report on loyalty dropping shortly.
What do you think is next for loyalty?
