Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an Industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m Paula Thomas, the Founder of Let’s Talk Loyalty. Today’s episode is hosted by Tom Peace, Managing Director of The Loyalty People, a strategic consultancy with a laser focus on loyalty, CRM, and customer engagement.
The Loyalty People also runs a free global community for anyone working in the loyalty industry. If you are working in loyalty marketing, make sure to join. Let’s Talk Loyalty every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to hear the latest ideas from loyalty experts around the world.
This show is brought to you by Comarch, a global provider of powerful loyalty management tools to increase. Customer lifetime value and improve your return on investment. Recognized as one of the top loyalty technology solutions providers in the Forrester Wave, loyalty Technology Solutions Report Quarter 1 2023.
Comarch is responsible for over 120 loyalty initiatives in 50 countries around the world. Comarch technologies help companies design, build, and manage highly immersive loyalty programs that bring results. For more information. Please visit comarch.com.
Tom: Hi, I’m Tom Peace, Managing Director of The Loyalty People and Presenter of Let’s Talk A Little Loyalty. Welcome to this week’s short summary show, on behalf of Let’s Talk Loyalty. This week my Let’s Talk a little Loyalty podcast showcases Paula’s interview with Kristi Gole. Formerly VP Head of Product at Global Hotel Alliance, and now EVP Strategy to hear how the GHA model works and how consumers benefit, please, listen on.
Global Hotel Alliance or GHA is the world’s largest alliance of independent hotel brands, supporting 35 hotel brands with more than 500 hotels across 85 countries.
Each levering the Discovery Guest Recognition program drive loyalty with guests. This alliance allows small and independent hotels to compete with global hospitality brands while still operating independently and giving consumers the opportunity to earn rewards across their many brands. It’s really interesting to hear how GHA was created initially as a consortium of independent hotel chains with a B2B focus to help compete against the big guys.
There was clearly a consumer angle here and GHA quickly built a large customer database. Essentially, this program started as a CRM solution for the participating brands to communicate with members in a targeted way. This is developed into an award-winning customer strategy as Kristy tells us, the key objective was to offer a very cost effective marketing solution for independent hotel chains where brands only pay based on incremental sales, and the costs are kept extremely low.
What’s really innovative about this program is the fact that their rewards have no cash value. They’re pointless points that reward the member with peered benefits that unlock experiences from the brand’s inventory, such as dining experiences and spa treatments. It is a really clever strategy as it engages the member with something valuable, but also creates a strong, positive emotional connection with the customer.
It also has the benefit of not carrying the cost liability of the points if they were to have had value. I really love this sort of program that creates incentives and rewards across a network of independence. Big brands too, but I also feel that independence businesses often offers something unique and interesting, and service is often very good.
Independent brands often miss out on the appeal of a mass loyalty program device. In the rare case of a unifying customer strategy across independent brands, I always try to be involved. Well done GHA for an excellent initiative. I highly recommend listening to the main show, which can be found at www.letstalkloyalty.com and first aired on 28th of April 2022, episode number 218. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed my summary show all of us to speak to you soon. Tom.
Paula: This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketer. The world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights, and research. The Wise Marketer also offers loyalty marketing training through its loyalty academy, which has already certified over 500 executives in 38 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
For more information, check out thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.
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