Loyalty tips

Marriott International has signed a licensing deal with MGM Resorts to let Marriott Bonvoy loyalty members earn points when staying at 17 MGM resorts, starting in October. Bookings at 40,000 of MGM’s rooms mainly in Las Vegas will be available through Marriott’s site and app by year-end.

Airlines can’t avoid Wi-Fi anymore: Travelers expect it, and they’re basing their flight choices on its quality and price.

Lifestyle hospitality brand Ennismore has launched a loyalty program with no need to earn points, no tiers to climb, and no need to wait for the rewards — at a typical fee of $216 (£144) a year.

Buying a share in a company typically involves hoping the stock price rises over time and maybe means sharing in dividends. But Selina, an upstart hospitality brand, said on Wednesday it has a new enticement for people to buy its stock — discounts and freebies at its properties.

Occupancy is at its lowest, losses are mounting, and the company announced another round of layoffs last month. Despite this, the luxury hospitality brand Inspirato has a few wins, including a new partnership with Capital One, and a rewards program launch.

Finnair will adopt Avios as its Finnair Plus loyalty currency next year, replacing the existing Finnair Plus points.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation is on the fast track to growing its brand, its property portfolio and its loyalty partnerships. While not the biggest hospitality company, it is laser-focused on being the best by expanding its geography and listening to customers. Even during the tough pandemic era, Hyatt found opportunity to grow in key markets and evolve with the ever-changing travel landscape. All of this helped position Hyatt for the post-Covid travel boom, benefiting both consumers and investors.

It’s a basic premise of savvy loyalty-program participation that the best return-on-investment is to be had by redeeming points for the program host’s own services. Airline miles are best redeemed for flights, and hotel points are best redeemed for free room nights. Sure, all major programs offer alternative award opportunities—consumer electronics, clothing, event tickets, and on and on—but when you do the math, it inevitably turns out that such options offer very poor value.

Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood has left one key group vocally underwhelmed: members of Starwood’s Preferred Guest program, particularly Starwood elites who have become accustomed to perks and services that play no part in Marriott’s Rewards program.

Although Uber has relationships with several airline and hotel loyalty programs, it has so far stopped short of launching its own program. That changes this week, with the announcement of a simple buy-nine-get-one-free offer in conjunction with Capital One.

With Alaska Airline’s acquisition of Virgin America, it was just a matter of time before Virgin’s loyalty program, Elevate, was terminated and its members folded into Alaska’s Mileage Plan program. In the meantime, the programs were somewhat integrated, allowing reciprocal mileage earning. And beginning on January 9, 2017, Elevate members will be able to convert their points at a 1:1.3 ratio to miles in Mileage Plan, and have their Virgin status matched in Alaska’s program.

American’s AAdvantage program isn’t the only loyalty scheme converting to spend-based points accrual later this year. Starbucks, the world’s largest purveyor of coffee-based beverages, has announced plans to make a similar change to its Rewards program, effective some time in April.

Ever-ready to stick a thumb in the eye of other airlines, Spirit’s latest promotion turns mainstream loyalty marketing on its head. Instead of awarding more miles for higher-priced tickets—as has become the norm, with the proliferation of spend-based schemes—Spirit is offering a mileage bonus that increases as the airfare decreases. “The less you spend, the more miles you will get.”

On March 1, Hyatt’s Gold Passport program will become World of Hyatt. Whether the change amounts to the introduction of a wholly new program or just a revamp of the existing program is more a matter of semantics than of substance. However how choose to look at it, though, the program is changing. And, according to many Hyatt loyalists, the change is not for the better.

When an airline knows its core customers are anything but frequent flyers, is there any point in hosting a loyalty program? Probably not. Which explains why Allegiant, the low-cost leisure-focused carrier based in Las Vegas, never rolled out a full-fledged frequent-flyer scheme. There’s just no return-on-investment when your customers are by definition infrequent flyers.

For the past seven years, Club Carlson has been the loyalty program for Carlson Hotels. OK, except, confusingly, there aren’t any Carlson hotels, except for Country Inn & Suites by Carlson, which are widely known simply as Country Inn & Suites.

Airbnb differs in many ways from traditional hotel chains. Among the differences: Whereas every major hotel group has a robust loyalty program, Airbnb has none. But that may be set to change.

When Marriott acquired Starwood in 2016, there was much speculation on how the merger would affect two very different loyalty programs. Since then, the Marriott and Starwood programs have operated independently, but as of yesterday, Marriott has announced that the programs, plus the Ritz-Carlton Rewards program, will officially merge into one mega-program beginning in August 2018.

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is the best of all the U.S. airline loyalty programs, says the U.S. News & World Report, and Marriott Rewards is the best of the large hotel-chain loyalty programs. The annual rankings emphasize benefits for basic members, and scores all loyalty programs on a scale of 1 to 5.