What corporate travel managers think of hotel loyalty programmes

Two-thirds (66 percent) of corporate travel managers agree that hotel loyalty programmes play at least a ?slightly important? role in their negotiations with hotels, and one in five admit they play a ?very important? or ?extremely important? role, according to research from the GBTA Foundation, the education and research arm of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA).
The study,??Making Hotel Loyalty Programs Work for You and Your Travel Program?, was sponsored by?Hilton Worldwide and surveyed more than 200 US corporate travel managers.
It revealed that hotel loyalty programmes are an important consideration for many travel managers when choosing preferred hotels.
The primary role that loyalty programmes play for Travel Managers is encouraging corporate travel policy compliance and driving greater volume to preferred hotels.
?Most loyalty programmes reward individual travellers for staying at hotel chains, but these programmes can also align with the goals of corporate travel programmes to promote compliance, improve traveller satisfaction and extract value from hotel stays,? says Joseph Bates, GBTA Foundation vice president of research.
?While the primary goal of loyalty programs is to incentivize travellers to be brand loyal, continued partnerships with travel managers should prevail.?