LiamAP

Good afternoon from Salzburg =)

First of all I want to thank you for your time to answer my question. I am a student and writing a research paper about "How do loyalty programs influence customers' behavior in hospitality?". That's why, I need some frequent flyers to answer my question to finish my paper.

1. In which loyalty programs have you registered (hotel,airlines)? (if possible your status)
2. Why did you choose this programs (rewards, availability)?
3. Are you traveling for work or leisurely?


About me:

1. I have status with American airlines, SPG, IHG and Hilton (from credit card).

2. The reason why I chose American because it has a great mile earning compare to other programs (e.g. 100% miles on AA or some of its partner) and also because of the upgrade rate as well as new hard products like 773, 787. When staying at a hotel I always try to look at spg.com first and compare to other chains but SPG offers quite good benefits such as upgrade, breakfast and lounge access and it has a good presence in Europe and Asia compared to Hyatt.

3. I travel mostly leisurely as I am a student.

Thanks once again for your help =)

mikelat

Hi,
I think you're going to need to do a bit more legwork yourself. Your questions are really open ended and aren't going to help create a research paper, at least not a good one . You might want to look more in to exactly what your goals are for the paper and how to reach them and then consider what questions you specifically want to ask.

sdsearch

I hate that question because it assumes (incorrectly) that eveything must fall into or the other.

Is traveling to someone funeral really "leisure"???

In my case, most of my travel is "commute reduction". I choose to stay in hotels near work several nights a week because work is too far away from home, and I don't want to change work, and I don't want to move close enough to work. (The area I live has horrible traffic between where I live and I work during rush hour.) But I'm not paid by my work to stay in these hotels; it's of my own choosing. (I'm paid hourly, though at professional rates, but don't have a fixed schedule, so if I can work more hours because I spend way less time commuting that pays for half the hotel cost; and the free vacation stays I get in turn for always "following the promos" on choosing hotels pays for the other half of the hotel cost.) So it's related to work but it's personal.

I thus think the question should always be something more like "required by work" or "personal". My "commute reduction" travel is personal.

To answer your question about hotels, I choose largely based on price, but within the group of hotels that give me good bonuses (earning points for later stays or earning lots of miles) while paying inexpensive rates. I've chosen Marriott as my primary "major" hotel because their Look No Further (LNF best rate guarantee) program lets me stay at hotels at 70% to 40% of the "normal" published rate. I stay there exactly however many nights it takes to "max out" the promos, not a single more a year. Then I use "naturally cheaper" hotel programs like Choice and Best Western and WyndhamRewards and (North America only) La Quinta (these are roughly like choosing Ibis in Europe in terms of cost in USA outside of city centers), but again I only stay at each brand when I can earn a bonus there. (Many of these bonus are "per stay", and a stay is defined as "any number of consecutive nights at the same hotel, no matter how many times you check in or check out", so I have to "hotel hop", ie change hotels every thing to maximize my bonuses, and I do.)

I thus stay 140+ nights a year in hotels, totally on my own dime, always "following the promos".

But am I typical? No.

By is anyone typical in this airline miles and hotel points world? I think not! (Everyone just has their own different way of being "not typical".)

This is such a specialized world, where you have to play all sorts of tricks (like the "hotel hopping" I just described), that most "ordinary" people wouldn't do. And that's why most people are "not typical", because each one who gets a lot from the system has their own different way of getting a lot from the system.

The only "typical" people will be the one who don't get much from system. (But FlyerTalk is not necessarily the place to find them; many of them don't get that much from the system because they don't visit FlyerTalk.)

By the way, you didn't specify which countries you wanted this input from. The hotel points and airline miles world works very differently in different countries (how many countries besides the USA do you find people applying for multiple airline and hotel credit cards many times every year?). So since you're in Germany, I'm not sure what audience you're looking for, and I'm not sure if you understand that the answers you get (if they just tersely answer the questions you asked) are going to be very skewed depending on where the person answering is based.

darthbimmer

Your questions are very broad. I'll give you high-level answers that I think should help you understand the breadth of the subject.

1. At last count, I had enrolled in 8 airline programs, 9 hotel programs, and 3 rental car programs. In each of these categories I am generally high-level elite in 1 program, mid-level in 1 or 2 others, and low- or no-status in the rest.

2. I enrolled in each of these programs because a) the potential benefits were valuable, and b) I foresaw traveling with each brand frequently enough that I would be able to realize that value. Understand that the numbers in my previous answer are low because of alliances and partnerships that allow me, for example, to rent cars from 8-10 different companies and earn valuable points with airlines instead of having to manage accounts with 8-10 separate car companies.

3. I travel for both work and leisure. At peak I was flying in excess of 150,000 miles per year. That helps explain the large number of programs I've enrolled in.

LiamAP

Thanks for your reply. It's a small research paper so some of your answers would be good for me. And for the next time, I'll consider your advice.

sdsearch

By the way, even though I virtually never do business travel (perhaps one conference or trade show a decade?), I've been similarly (to darthbimmer) enrolled in 10 airline programs. Though due to mergers that's down to 7 now and one I'm about to drop because its devolving to an ULCC model (RyanAir-like) and doesn't fly anywhere that several better airlines who programs I belong to fly, so I guess I'm essentially down to 6: AA (where have lifetime mid-level status*), UA (where I have first-level status only through their tie with Marriott!), DL, Alaska, Southwest, BA, and LAN.

*AA used to award lifetime status based on all miles from all sources, including credit cards and bonuses on same, hotel program earnings and transfers, shopping programs, dining programs, and bonuses on flying. They no longer give lifetime status based on any of those (since Dec 2011), only on paid flights (and not bonuses on same), but I got my mid-level lifetime status locked in before that change.

I already explained my hotel situation to some degree above, which explains how I'm top-level status withe Marriott and at least mid-level status with Choice and Best Western each year. But in addition to those, I have status at hotel programs I stay at pretty much only on vacation trips, and these include second-level-up IHG from the credit card, second-level-up Hilton HHonors from non-credit card promos (most recently from the Milepoint Premium promo of 1.5 years ago), and almost first level from SPG from the credit card. I also belong to Wyndham Rewards (which has no true status levels) and Club Carlson (where there is a status level possible with a credit card but I didn't both because the status level that CC credit card offers doesn't give anything that useful to me).

I also belong to Amtrak (rail program) Guest Rewards, but no status there either (and I very rarely ride Amtrak; most of my rail travel is when visiting Europe!).

I chose to belong to some many programs because no one airline program can get me everywhere in the world I might want to go, and not every hotel program has properties everywhere in the world I want to go.

I didn't join those programs which are too much "duplicates" for me (for example, it's hard to find a location that has a Hyatt that doesn't also have one of the other hotel programs I belong to, and I already have miles in at least one airline in each of the three alliances, so I don't necessarily need miles in more airlines in the same alliances), and/or which are too hard for me to earn significant miles/points based in California and on my budget, and/or which have expiration policies that wouldn't work for me (in many parts of the world, though in the USA, most airlines have miles that expire with no way to extend expiration, and/or only able to extend expiration by flying expensive flights only on that airline's planes).

I have a combination of over 2.5 million miles (more than half of that with AA), and also over 2 million hotel points (though not all hotel points have the same value, so that's harder to add up into one meaningful number). All this while starting at 0 miles and 0 hotel points in 2003. Only a fraction of the total miles and total hotel points were from flights and hotel stays; a majority of each was from promos of various sorts. At this point, I have enough miles and points for the next few trips anywhere, but I feel the need to replenish where I can (in case it'll be a lot harder to replenish in the future), plus to replenish especially in those programs where my balances aren't as high as AA.

bosman

OK, I'll play:
1. I am registered in the following programs: AA, DL, UA, B6 and Southwest programs (Elite status in AA), Hilton, SPG, Marriott and IHG (Elite status in Hilt and Marr) and Hertz, Avis, Budget and Enterprise programs.
2. I chose these programs as I frequently/occasionally use these companies and figured that some miles/points are better than no miles/points.
3. My travel is 90% work, 10$ business.

februaryfour

I have United MileagePlus membership, and it's the major program for me. Same for my husband. We don't bother with hotel memberships as we stay frugally in cheap hotels, but we do have a Wyndham Rewards membership. I have other loyalty program registrations, but I don't use them, so I don't think there's any point in listing them. I have no status but am a holder of the MP Club Card, which means I get some nice perks like Priority treatment; my husband is Premier Silver in his own right. (We don't travel that much, but I've always been fascinated by flying, and I'm a pilot's daughter.)

2. My husband and I both have MileagePlus because we live in Denver, a United hub. We could have gone with AA, but my husband had bad experiences with AA in the past and prefers United. We save our miles for redeeming award flights to Asia, because my family is there.

3. I usually travel for leisure. My husband mostly travels for work, though on occasion he's been able to mix business with pleasure.