Loyalty Programs Are Not Enough: Active Loyalty from Hotel Customers’ Perspectives
APacCHRIE is the Asian Pacific Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education. This paper was presented at the 9th APacCHRIE Conference, Hongkong, S.A.R. China, June 2-5, 2011. This paper and the slides that are included as a supplement are Copyright © 2011 the authors. All rights reserved.
Abstract
Loyalty programs are prevalent in today’s marketplace. However, having a loyalty program does not ensure customer loyalty. Customers tend to possess multiple loyalty program memberships and many memberships remain inactive. Considering the various costs associated with establishing and maintaining the loyalty programs, the questions about how customers perceive their active loyalty with the loyalty programs become very critical. This study identified five basic dimensions of active loyalty based on previous literature and empirically tested them with the general U.S. based travelers. Increased purchase frequency and frequent engagement were found as significant indicators of perceived active loyalty. Other results and implications were presented accordingly.
