Flyer Talk and Hotel Loyalty Programs
 

Question: Do you think that, across the board, Flyer Talk population is proportionally represented among the various hotel loyalty programs?

For example, when I look at the Hotel Programs sub-forum and I look at the number of posts in each forum, SPG has the most posts at 411,919 (current as of this posting). Do you think that means

A) More people in Flyer Talk are members of SPG than any other Hotel Loyalty program.

B) Flyer Talk members who are also SPG members are more passionate about SPG than others are about their main Hotel Loyalty program.

C) Since more people post in the SPG forum then SPG has more members than any other Hotel Loyalty program represented on Flyer Talk.

What do you think? Any one of these ring true to you? More than one? None of the above?

SPG forum is busy because the program is paying attention through its rep Starwood Lurker & Associates.

I agree.

I think the general popularity of the SPG Amex card is a factor as well. I believe that card is more effective than any other hotel credit card at eventually driving business to SPG properties so people post looking for information about properties, promotions, and policies. SPG is then smart to monitor the board and provide advice and assistance to posters.

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But I think the other hotel forums such as Hyatt, Marriot, IC, Hilton all get plenty of attention as well. Maybe brands like Choice not so much

+2

Both good things and bad things can affect the volume of activity in a specific program (hotel or otherwise) sub-forum.

For example, Priority Club forum got super-active when they instituted a poorly-implemented best-rate-guarantee program. It was much less active in the time immediately preceding that.

It takes a "critical mass" to be able to use FlyerTalk for hotel reviews (as opposed to relying on a more general source like TripAdvisor). Some hotel forums, including SPG and Hilton, are filled with threads about particular hotels that lots of people stay at. Other forums, like Choice and Best Western, have so many hotels all at about the same level that there are no "most popular" hotels that everyone talks about. There are a number of people who use those programs, but everyone stays at different properties, and so there's no the discussion of individual properties that there is in programs that have fewer properties (like Hyatt) or at least fewer "big name" properties (like Hilton).

Some hotel program sub-forums get much more active when a hot promo is going on (for example, the just-about-over stay 1 night in a Radisson and get 50,000 bonus points in Club Carlson), and then die down compartively when that promo is over and done.

Budget hotel programs don't get the discussion about "how to get a better room" (because all the rooms are about the same) that dominates so much of the discussion in the higher-end hotel programs.

Finally, programs without any elite status aspect, such as WyndhamRewards, have less activity simply because there can't be any threads about how to fast track to an elite level, what perks you get with each elite level, which hotels honor or don't honor elite status, etc. Simpler programs tend to need less discussion than more complex programs.

So when you look at the posts in each sub-forum, the list from most active to least active is as follows:

Starwood Preferred Guest
Hilton HHonors
Marriott Rewards
InterContinental: Priority Club
Hyatt Gold Passport

The general consensus is then that this does not reflect the popularity (relative number of members) in each loyalty program?

I would assume SPG, but it's very true that activity on the forums is not necessarily correlated to actual relative membership.

Which is a lot cheaper than free breakfasts for Platinums! Though for the life of me, can't understand why they would not copy Hyatt's guaranteed suite upgrades on paid rooms - I know it increased my paid stays at Hyatt and assume it would also help Starwood hotels' bottom lines.

Hyatt has very few properties (and also fewer types of properties), compared to the other programs. So I don't necessarily see the other programs looking to copy Hyatt as much as the others, because even if Hyatt does something in all their hotels, it's done that in relatively few hotels, compared to the number of hotels in the whole Starwood family, or whole Hilton family, or whole IHG family, or whole Marriott family. Likewise, even if every person who stays at a Hyatt were someone who used to stay at Starwood hotels, because there are so fewer Hyatt rooms than Starwood rooms, Hyatt would have gained a lot percentage wise while Starwood would have lost only a fraction. That's why it would seem to me that Starwood would care less about losing an individual to Hyatt than Hyatt would care about losing an individual to Starwood. Hyatt in a sense has to be stronger at something, to make up for the fact that it's got fewer locations to offer. (The other hotel families can dangle "tons of locations" as a feature to counter Hyatt.)