Starwood rewards travel professionals

09 Sep 2014  2042 | World Travel News

BANGKOK Travel agents will soon be able to earn personal loyalty points every time they book clients into a Starwood property worldwide.
Starwood’s top marketing and sales executives introduced a rebuild of its popular Starwood Preferred Guest programme, last Friday, that will offer loyalty points to the group’s B2B customers, once it goes online this October.
Tagged SPG Pro, it represents a game changer in the competitive B2B space with Starwood offering loyalty points on rooms and meeting space bookings to all travel professionals.
SPG Plus applies to travel professionals who book their leisure and corporate clients into any of the group’s 1,200 hotels, worldwide, as well as on bookings for events, corporate business and meetings.
Travel agents, corporate secretaries and anyone who has the capability to book others into a Starwood property can gain points – one for every USD3 spent with just 2,000 points needed to pay for their own overnight stay at a Starwood hotel.
They need to register as a SPG Pro member at http://www.spg.com/pro and reward points start to accummulate effective this October.
Around USD30 million will be spent on promoting and marketing SPG Pro to travel professionals.
Starwood president and CEO, Fritz van Paasschen, said SPG Pro was designed to leverage the strength of SPG, which today drives more than 50% of the company’s occupancy and continues to shift consumer business to Starwood hotels.
“With SPG Po we’re focusing a powerful loyalty lens on B2B to cultivate even stronger and more personal relationships with our global customers who deliver guests to our hotels.”
But the innovation of passing on loyalty points to the booker in addition to the guests will not be welcomed in every market.
Starwood executives attending the launch event in Bangkok admitted that in some markets it might be construed as compromising independent recommendations for reward.
Even in Asia, where business ethics are less likely to penalise a travel professional from taking perks, indiviidual travel firms may object.
“Some companies will insist that the loyalty points be placed in a company pool and not be given directly to an individual who booked the room,” a Starwood executive explained.
“Others will insist that staff inform the management that they have enlisted in the programme.”
It will also depend on the travel firm’s corporate policy and official contracts that it already has in place on bookings, that may be exclusive. Other hotel groups have incentive shemes for travel professionals and third party suppliers, but this is probably the first time it has been introduced within the framework of a popular loyalty programme SPG that was originally designed for guests.
But despite concerns travel firm owners might have, SPG Pro will connect with thousands of travel professionals amd meeting planners who like the idea of earning points for their own personal hotel stays when booking guests into Starwood hotels.
The group said that 70% of all its overall room revenue is B2B driven, but that figure is for all bookings generated by a mix of so called “B2B channels” ranging from traditional travel agents and online travel agencies to company secretaries and other third parties who could book a group into a Starwood hotel.
It will add costs for Starwood as it will ultimately be giving rooms for rewards earned by both the guest and booker.
But Starwood emphasises it is also targeting a new source of untapped B2B potential; its loyal guests.
According to senior vice president distribution loyalty and partnership marketing, Mark Vondrasek, 34% of SPG’s platinum guests could be senior executives, business consultants or small business owners who book events in hotels. About one third of all elite SPG members are decision makers and at present Starwood gets a 40% share of the business that they book.
Starwood now includes these potential bookers as B2B customers offering them the power to earn more points by referring business.
Said Vondrasek: “We realised there was a great opportunity to recognise our guests’ business beyond just our rooms. By rewarding business such as corporate off sites, product launches or even personal events such as weddings, we build greater stickiness with our loyal guests.”

sourced:ttrweekly.com 

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