Hotel Loyalty 2012-Q2 promotions Starwood Hotels Starwood Preferred Guest

SPG plays coy with Nice Choice promotion

Starwood announced on FlyerTalk Monday, April 9 that its new promotion is “Nice Choice” and registration will open May 1 at spg.com/nicechoice. All hotels worldwide will be participating.

That is all the information that was released. The announcement suggests members follow Twitter or Facebook for more details to come.

The omission in the announcement though is there are no links provided to show readers where the Twitter and Facebook feeds are located!

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FlyerTalk Next SPG 2012 Promotion.

The secret is you have to click on the signature line of Starwood Lurker “Stay Connected with SPG” and you will find the specific Facebook and Twitter feeds for SPG.

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https://www.facebook.com/SPG

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https://twitter.com/#!/SPGInsider

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Four days after announcing member registration for a new SPG promotion will be available on May 1, the second set of details emerged on Friday, April 13 to tell us members we can choose from 3 earning periods for this promotion.

  • May-July
  • June-August
  • July-September

Is being coy on social media a nice choice for rolling out a new hotel loyalty promotion?

I understand how this type of campaign helps bring people to the SPG social media sites and the power that has to get information directly to consumers in the future, but I keep thinking of the article by Tim Winship of FrequentFlier.com:

When Should Hotels Announce Upcoming Promotions? (Feb 6, 2012) – Tim Winship.

Tim Winship is one of the original loyalty program experts working in social media since the 90s. He co-authored the book Mileage Pro: The Insider’s Guide to Mileage Programs with Randy Petersen, published in 2005.

After Hyatt Gold Passport announced its current promotion, 16 nights for 44,000 points, at the OneWorld MegaDo event in January, the promotion was publicized by The Points Guy and several BoardingArea bloggers. But when Tim Winship tried to get the promotion details from Hyatt’s PR contact, he was told the information was embargoed until February 1, the date the Hyatt Gold Passport promotion started.

May 1, 2012 is 17 days away.

I know there will be a SPG promotion starting in May or maybe I’ll choose a start date in June or July.

Hard to plan out my travels with SPG when I don’t have an official clue what will be offered as SPG choices for the months of May to September.

Make “nice choices” is something I expect to hear my wife say to her 1st graders when they socialize with each other.

A “nice choice” for my hotel loyalty program, in my opinion, is just give me complete hotel loyalty promotion details in a timely manner prior to the start date for the promotion so I, as a loyalty member and travel consumer, can plan our hotel travel in a timely manner.

That is the “nice choice” I would like to have from SPG.

5 Comments

  • Scottrick April 14, 2012

    I agree. Be transparent and let people plan accordingly. Too many games and I’ll decide to direct my business to a program I actually understand.

  • PSL April 14, 2012

    I couldn’t agree more. Since their most loyal customers spend much of their time traveling to SPG hotels here and abroad where Internet connections are iffy at best, it would make a lot more sense to spell out the details several weeks in advance. I feel Starwood is treating us like children who have to wait till Christmas morning to open up the gifts, rather than adults who prefer to make logical decisions while avoiding inconvenience.

  • erndog April 14, 2012

    The bigger the hype, the bigger the disappointment . . . from what’s been leaked so far, looks to be a mish-mash of earnings options.

    What I don’t understand is once you’ve committed to an earning time-frame – what is the incentive to stay with SPG when you aren’t earning anything towards your payoff?

    Seems like a good time for Hyatt to roll out the ‘ol FFN and pick away at this . . .

  • Mark April 17, 2012

    Agreed

  • John April 19, 2012

    Makes me feel as if I’m being treated like a child.

Comments are closed.

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