The Power of Loyalty and the Changing Definition of Quality in Hospitality
This session explores how quality and loyalty evolve over time, and why understanding this evolution is critical for hotels today. Through everyday examples, such as bakeries, cars, and guest experiences, the speaker highlights how expectations shift, while core values remain constant
Quality Is Not Static
Quality is defined as meeting and exceeding customer expectations, and those expectations continuously change.
Examples:
Bread in Germany: loyalty built through consistent quality and trust.
Cars (Volkswagen, Tesla): quality has shifted from mechanical perfection to ecosystem experience, digital access, and seamless usability.
Today, a car is no longer “high quality” if phone integration fails—regardless of build quality.
Key insight:
Quality is no longer just about the product itself, but about the entire experience.
How Quality in Hotels Has Changed
Quality in the 1970s
Thick carpets
Heavy bedspreads
Landline telephones
TVs and private bathrooms as premium features
These elements symbolized luxury but were expensive, inefficient, and difficult to maintain.
Quality Today
Minimalist, functional room design
Easy-to-clean materials
Smaller desks to encourage guests into public spaces (lobby, bar)
Design and functionality over excess
Hotels now optimize both guest experience and operational efficiency.
What Never Changes
Despite trends and design shifts, some fundamentals remain timeless:
Cleanliness
Service quality
Feeling welcome
Human interaction
Hospitality has always been, and remains, a people business.
Loyalty: The Most Undervalued Asset
Loyalty is built through recognition, trust, and relevance, not only through points or discounts.
Observations:
Many hotels collect large amounts of guest data but do not use it effectively
Data often sits in silos
Hyper-personalization is discussed but rarely executed
Personalized communication (emails, offers, content) dramatically increases engagement compared to generic messaging.
Independent Hotels Have an Advantage
Large brands (Marriott, Hilton, etc.) have powerful loyalty programs, but:
They come with high costs, as a franchise is needed to apply to it
Hotels pay significant fees for access and visibility
OTAs also build loyalty programs that compete directly with hotels
Going with an OTA loyalty program (i.e. Genius) does move power to OTA and away from the hotel
Independent hotels:
Know their guests better
Can act faster
Can personalize more effectively
Can build loyalty without massive systems
Small changes can create big loyalty impact.
The Economics of Loyal Guests
Loyal guests deliver value across multiple dimensions:
Lower acquisition costs (no OTA commission on repeat stays)
