Social Media and Marketing

InterContinental Hotels Group plans to capitalise on Hilton Worldwide’s recent decision to raise the number of loyalty points required for a free hotel stay.

Published: 09 Feb 2010

InterContinental Hotels Group plans to capitalise on Hilton Worldwide’s recent decision to raise the number of loyalty points required for a free hotel stay.

IHG’s Priority Club Rewards recently launched its worldwide Luckiest Loser competition. In response to the recent increases in the Hilton HHonors hotel rewards rates, which effectively devalued HHonors members’ points by about 20 percent, Priority Club Rewards is offering consumers a chance to gain back their “lost” loyalty points.

“If you want your loyal customers to stick with you during tough times, it’s vital to show you appreciate them and give them more value, not less. So it’s no wonder there was such a negative reaction to Hilton devaluing their points programme,” said Tom Seddon, chief marketing officer, IHG.

“Some of our customers, particularly ones we’re talking to on social networking sites, asked us if there was anything we could do to help - so we’re offering to replace their lost Hilton HHonors points with Priority Club points, giving them the opportunity to stay for free at any one of our 4,400 hotels around the world,” said Seddon.

Competition

The Priority Club Rewards member who has the highest verified Hilton HHonors points balance will be the “Luckiest Loser” and gain two million Priority Club points; enough to redeem for about 80 free hotel nights at more than 4,000 of IHG’s hotels across the globe. Another 20,000 “Lucky Losers” will be awarded up to 400 million total Priority Club points to help compensate for what they are “losing” with Hilton HHonors.

To enter the competition, participants must also be registered Priority Club Rewards members as of January 31, 2010 and follow the verification process.

Simply supply their Hilton HHonors points balance at www.priorityclub.com/luckiestloser

Each qualified participant will automatically get 1,000 Priority Club points just for entering

The top 20,000 “Lucky Losers” will each “gain back” up to 20 percent of their current HHonors balance in Priority Club points (up to 20,000 points each)

The “Luckiest Loser” will win two million Priority Club points – enough to stay with IHG hotels for free for almost three months.

The competition will run through February 28, and is exclusive to current members of both Priority Club Rewards and HHonors programs as of January 31, 2010.