Dive Brief:
- The hospitality and tourism industry is most likely to report “reward relevance” as a top challenge when it comes to loyalty programs, according to the 2025 EY Loyalty Market Study, released last week.
- Some 35% of the sector’s corporate respondents to EY’s study cited “reward relevance” when asked their top challenges, higher than the 28% of respondents across industries who indicated the same.
- Hospitality and tourism loyalty marketers should clearly communicate their programs’ benefits and reinforce the value in dollar amounts if possible, EY advised in the report. Hospitality programs should also consider promoting exclusive services that enhance experiences, often through coalition programs and partnerships, per the report.
Dive Insight:
EY’s Loyalty Market Study collected and analyzed data from more than 1,600 consumers and 350 corporate employees across sectors.
The findings show that the hospitality and tourism industry is the most likely to plan on updating UX or digital program experiences (44%, as compared to 31% across industries) in order to make booking “as seamless for members as possible” as travel demand continues to grow post-pandemic.
Corporate respondents in hospitality also told EY that their top metrics when measuring loyalty program success are loyalty program retention, overall increased sales, active member rate, customer engagement metrics and purchase frequency.
Hotel loyalty membership surged in 2024 to more than 675 million members across the five key brand families of Choice Hotels International, Hilton, Hyatt Hotels, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, according to CBRE research released earlier this year.
According to EY, consumer participation in loyalty programs across industries remains stable, with 92% of consumers surveyed enrolled in at least one loyalty program, and nearly half belonging to more than five.
Loyalty members, however, were less likely to say that loyalty programs improve their perception of a brand or increase their spending in this year’s report than last year’s, EY found, calling consumer engagement “solid — but mostly transactional.”
“While more than half of shoppers we surveyed engage with their loyalty programs weekly, a significant portion report feeling little to no emotional connection to these programs,” per the report.
Hotel companies’ recent loyalty plays include Wyndham’s partnership with Applebee’s and Marriott Bonvoy’s VIP Beyoncé tour experiences.
