Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
A Rich Legacy of Innovation: A Q&A with Hilton on Providing Exceptional Hospitality for Honors Program Members
In 1919, Conrad Hilton was on his way to buy a bank in Cisco, TX. When the price was raised at the last moment, Hilton left the deal on the table, quickly pivoted, and purchased the 40-room Mobley Hotel located in the same town. This decision would forever change the world of hospitality.
It wasn’t until 1925 that the first hotel bearing the name Hilton was opened in downtown Dallas, TX, targeting business travelers while also offering downtown shoppers a place to stay. This was the first newly constructed hotel for the brand, with exciting amenities such as elevators and laundry chutes. Forward-thinking design helped combat the heat of the hot Dallas sun; no guest rooms were built on the western-facing side of the building.
Innovation, embracing new technologies, and a passion for delivering exceptional stays to guests continue to fuel the purpose and vision of today’s Hilton. Its award-winning Hilton Honors loyalty program leads the industry in creating seamless digital experiences while rewarding members early with valuable points earning and redemption opportunities.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Brad Anderson, Vice President of Hilton Honors Program Strategy at Hilton, about the program’s built-in customization and flexibility, technology enhancements to ensure guest experiences are valuable, and collecting customer feedback on active products.
Good afternoon, good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I want to welcome you back to another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series. In this series, we speak with leading brands about what they are seeing and hearing on the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Brad Anderson. He's the Vice President of the Hilton Honors Program, the Strategy Group at Hilton. How are you today, brad? I'm great. It's lovely. Out there it's raining here. It's summer, hot, humid, but it's been raining in Cincinnati for like a week now. I'm getting ready to figure out what an arc is, what a cubit is. I'm sorry a joke, yeah, so, again, thank you for taking the time.
Mark Johnson:We'd like to start with you on a more personal level. I'd like to know you a little bit more. Obviously, you're rolled Hilton, maybe what you did before that, and you know a fun fact or a passion you may have outside of work? Yeah, of course. Thank you, Mark, and thank you to Loyalty360 for the conversation. You know, first and foremost, I'm a proud dad of two young children, both under five years old and part of my wife, of over 10 years.
Mark Johnson:Professionally, as you mentioned, I serve as the Vice President of the Global Hilton Honors Loyalty Program. We're here in the Northern Virginia area. I've been with Hilton and specifically Hilton Honors, for the past seven years. In that time my team and I have charted new courses for the program, achieved a massive amount of growth over 100 million new members since I started and really tried to find the best strategies, investments to delight our customers. So you know my roles within Hilton have all been within the Loyalty Program. I've kind of really done a lot of different functions. So program design, strategy development I've been a part of any of the major program partner launches, program evolutions. I oversee our point currency to ensure we maintain our redemption value and flexibility for customers. My team also looks after the highest quality member experiences and digital innovations which I'm sure we'll get into to make staying just easy and seamless. And I also look after the commercial value of the program to our hotel ownership groups and have expertise right in the loyalty ops side. So in my current role I have the real great privilege of setting the overall strategy and vision for the program where we really try to position Honors as like the best global loyalty program across all of industries and within hospitality, that really means making the staying better for 165 million members.
Mark Johnson:Prior to Hilton, I was at Deloitte Consulting in their strategy innovation practice and really fell in love with being a point obsessed nerd and locking the best value on the customer side. So I think you know nothing will say you know it's really a dream job. It's really fun to be in two dynamic industries loyalty and travel, hospitality and really bring these three moments. So on the fun fact side, I have been privileged enough to visit all of the lower 48 states and hike through many of the national parks. We actually have a trip in a few weeks to Alaska where the kids to stay in our Hampton Inn and Hilton Anchorage properties and we're planning for Hawaii early next year at around 50 states. So it's a little bit about me. That's good. 50 states is a good number. I think I counted it. I was in the 40s but not 48. So yeah, getting close. So Hilton, everyone knows the brand, iconic brand, great customer loyalty program, diamond Guy myself, hopefully I make it this year Going to be close when you look at Hilton.
Mark Johnson:For those who may not know about Hilton, can you give us a little brief history of the brand and how you guys reformed and hold it. It would be great to know. Yeah, of course Hilton has a really rich history. Over a hundred years young we're A hundred years of hospitality, all of which started back in 1919 when Conrad Hilton entered the hotel business in Cisco, Texas, and so he actually was on his way to buy a bank and he actually pivoted and actually bought the Mowgli, which is a local hotel where he was staying there, when he saw the kind of business it was, which really sparked a whole new dream for him. In 1925, he opened the first hotel with the Hilton name in Dallas, texas, and he really aimed to be the best hotel in Texas and really focused on innovation really from the start of the company. So this hotel had elevators, laundry shoots, actually built the hotel with the west side of the building with no guest rooms, because Western Sun in Dallas is extremely hot and there was no air conditioning back then. So began on the innovation journey early on. Hilton came into the stock market as the first hotel company to join in 1946. And you may have heard of Waldorf Astoria in New York City. He bought that in 1949 to start a luxury journey, calling it the greatest of them all, and the same year we actually launched Hilton International at the Caribe Hilton in Puerto Rico, where, fun fact, the Pina Colada was invented in 1954 by our hotel bar staff. Moving into, like the mid-century Baron Hilton introduced on the customer side a new Hilton card blanche credit card which is really the premier travel card of its time, and then in the 1990s, we became American Express' first co-branded credit card product, and they've been one of Orlando's longest standing partners, continuing today with our award-winning credit cards.
Mark Johnson:In very recent years, Chris Nassetta became our CEO in 2009. We've just been on an extremely rapid growth journey. We had about 10 brands at the time when he joined. We now have over 20. We have 22 brands to meet every guest's need across the world. So, taking the full picture of Hilton, we are a leading global hospitality company. We have 7,300 properties across the world, 1.1 million rooms in 123 countries. So, in summary, it's all about the founding vision of filling the earth with the light and more hospitality, and we've done that by welcoming three billion guests. We are one of the top 100 best places to work for in the world, and so for me, it's just really extremely humbling to be part of that history and building that legacy in the loyalty side. That's awesome. Great to hear more about the history, for sure, and part of that history.
Mark Johnson:You mentioned an amazing Hilton Honors program, loyalty program Under your stewardship you mentioned you've grown it over 100 million. Can you give us a brief history of the program, I mean when it was started, how the program works, how members engage with it and what are the benefits of the program? Most importantly, how do you keep it award-winning and going forward? Yeah, so I'll say first, Hilton Honors is kind of this connective tissue, as other loyalty programs are, that kind of glues our brands together. In some ways we call it a loyalty program, but I kind of personally think that undersells the value. It's the lifeblood, it's how you connect with every one of our guests in a meaningful way, in a personal way, and it's really about making travel effortless, really fun, delighting. We have a bunch of exceptional experiences. You may have seen our new brand platform launch last year. So if Hilton is for the stay, then Hilton Honors is all about making that stay even better when you have a relationship with us.
Mark Johnson:So in terms of history, we debuted in 1987. In fact fun fact the program actually started as an instant win scratch-off promotion tied to the US Olympic team sponsorship, and since then we've grown to a number of industry-first innovations. But those are really those humble beginnings, and momentum grew. We were a million members in 1996, 10 million in 2002, 20 million in 2008. And when I first joined in 2016, we've added over 100 million members, so we are known to be the fastest growing hotel loyalty program in the industry. We have over 165 million members now, which is a 20% year-over-year growth, and we added about 7 million last quarter. So by the time we're probably done speaking, we will have added a couple thousand members to the program. That's great, which is crazy. And before I get to the customer side, our members make up a large amount of hotels. So they account for about 64% of all occupied nights in the entire world, and that's the highest amount across major hospitality companies. So really think of it this way six out of every 10 guests in any hotel in the world right now are Hilton Honors members.
Mark Johnson:So you mentioned how do we do that? What's the secret sauce? On the customer experience side, it's really simple, but hard to complex to execute. All we're trying to do is making the staying experience better for all members. Whether you stay one night or whether you stay 100 nights, we have different rewards and benefits to enhance your experience, both within the stay but also around in adjacencies, around the staying. So what are we about? First thing to know is we're easy. It's just easy to join. Our points are easy to earn, easy to redeem. We have no gotchas to keep you from using your points. It's really rewarding. So we offer discounts, we have generous promotions, we give you ways to get status through our credit cards.
Mark Johnson:I think uniquely Hilton honors is this idea of customization and flexibility. So with our app you can choose your room, the exact room you want. We give you a very flexible way to use your points, with industry first points and money slider. So any hotel, no block updates. If that paid room is there, we are allowing you to use your points, which isn't necessarily standard in hospitality, and we have exclusive partners like Lyft, amazon, ticketmaster if you need to use your points in a flexible way.
Mark Johnson:In terms of the hotel experience, I think you talked with my colleague Amanda Jamerson about our automated room upgrades. If you're elite, that gives you the confirmed room 72 hours ahead of time that upgrade, and then the last thing I'll say is we're trying to create dreams. So what's the dream? Stay with your points, a dream experience. We kind of have that opportunity for you to really engage beyond just a room. So a lot of ways to engage, a lot of ways to have a relationship with us, and I think one of those ways to engage could be International Friendship Day I think that's July 30th which helps Hilton Honor members make it easy for the next friendcation. Can you tell us a little bit about that promotion, that idea, how that came to be? Yeah, I think it really Hilton.
Mark Johnson:It really matters where you stay and we really want to provide Hilton Honors as a way to unlock that really great stay and not just for yourself, but that stay with your friends on International Friendship Day or beyond. So it's all about giving value if you're trying to travel together. So, as I mentioned before, making sure you and your friends get the best discount is through Hilton Honors. So making sure folks are able to book them, book that really easily through the app and then making sure you reward you for that and all your friends staying. So I want to make sure that you're getting ways to get points for those future friends days and if you have elite status, you are able to get those points faster and use them really quickly without having to build up a bunch of points to go with your friends. And then, lastly, as if your friend has status or other elements, being able to have that room upgrade when you're going with your crew to your travel experience and making sure you receive that food and beverage experience that comes with status. Just make sure that stay is something that feels different, whether it's one person or four to eight people Excellent.
Mark Johnson:When you look at the Hilton Honors allowing travel buddies the opportunity to pull their points to book rooms, how is that? Collaboration between the accounts resulted in greater program engagement. How are you looking at that? Yeah, we were the first to launch free points pooling and free transfer in the industry. So it really allows you to have 11 Honors members if that's how big your group is a member and 10 others to combine your points really easily to get that next day with your friends or family. And we don't charge you for that. There's no transaction fees, there's no gotchas. So we've seen a lot of members use the ability to come together, have a family, extended family, use your points together for a hotel stay or even some of the experiences on our platform, which I'm sure I'll talk a little bit about, but really it's offered a great way to drive stickiness, have engagement, like we want you to use your points with your friends and family, so we want you to get you to that stay and stay with our amazing brand. So that's really the goal with that product. Ok, you mentioned Hilton.
Mark Johnson:Honors has a very flexible mobile app. You can access your Jujube Room key, move rooms around, especially if you have a pet or don't have a pet, you can get next to that door potentially. How has the mobile app allowed for more personalized experience for customers and where do you think technology is leading to in the hotel industry with Hilton to maybe enable more of that? Yeah, the Hilton Honors app is a critical piece of allowing our members to control that travel experience and have some flexibility as they do it. I've had a lot of industry first on that front and really have leaned into technology enhancements to make sure the guest experience is immediately valuable and customizable for members right when they join and sign up. So one really cool innovation is something called Confirm Connecting Rooms. We were the first in the industry to be able to build a way to instantly confirm those connecting rooms. So if you travel with your family or your friends, you're like hoping at the front desk they have a connecting room there. Put in a request. This actually lets you do it at time of booking, so you'll have that way to know that you're right next to your friends and your family, which is critically important.
Mark Johnson:On the Choose your Room elements, we talked a bit about that but being able to be away from the elevator or be close to the elevator on the first floor, it's very seamless in the way to do that. We also have a digital key which lets you go straight to your room. A first for them, a major hospitality company, was digital key share, so you can actually share that with your guests or your friends, your family, with up to four people, right through the phone, right through the app. Actually, for us as a young family, trying to get two kids in the room and having my wife up there and then being able to go back to the car and having two keys is really critical and a digital key experience. And then, last couple of things, we have integrated our Lyft rideshare right into the app. So if you need to book your Lyft through Traveling with Friends, you have to go find the hotel address. It's all really integrated into the experience.
Mark Johnson:So, a few ways to engage and have a different feeling stay with Hilton through our app Technology. Okay, excellent. Definitely, being able to share a key is important. I travel a lot for soccer. My daughter is actually starting at Akron next week. She's going to play soccer for them, hopefully, start. So I end up sharing keys with her no matter where we are, and it works very well. So that's a really cool innovation. Definitely. That's awesome.
Mark Johnson:So when you look at your mobile app and kind of the customer experience platform, members can explore different experiences and outings when they're on their trip. How does that help from a personalization perspective to create engagement and where do you see the experience platform going? Yeah, this, this is one of the one of the coolest pieces of the program. So the Hilton Alesi experiences platform allows members to, you know, engage in our kind of some exclusive partnerships and kind of pursue those passion points typically around to stay, so their favorite artists, big culture moments, pursuing passions that really inspire them. So the first thing that we think about is how do we understand our guests and what interests go beyond travel or integrate with travel, and how we reward them by creating money can't buy elements that you know having these honors points Creates that experience for them. So you know what's different about us as well is that we actually Integrate our hotel and signature hospitality into these once-in-a-lifetime moments.
Mark Johnson:And I'll give you a few examples. You know we recently had last year a John Legend private member only concert at our world of Astoria DC property. We had a cultural connection with the roots and their meet and greet in Philly. And In Europe we have exclusive partnership with McLaren and they have a F1. The British Grand Prix was there. We actually have a hotel at Silverstone racetrack it's a Hilton Garden Inn and we did a bunch of activations with McLaren and we had Paris Hilton DJ for us had our members be able to kind of engage with the F1 experience in a totally different way, where we integrated the hotel and the experience itself. You mentioned soccer. We actually just launched a Chelsea football club sponsorship and being able to get VIP access to those football players on the match, on the pitch With the with their experiences. So you know we've done a lot of other things. We have a Grammy partnership that were the official hotel sponsor there, but she did a really cool thing with the connected room concert where Brandy Carlisle Was actually did a performance between our two rooms In that concert for for for Hilton, which was a really cool experience. So you know a lot of different ways to to engage and I'd say you know there's a lot of exciting Signature events coming up, like the Ryder Cup we can actually stay on the green in a real hotel room. We have more F1 coming up and and if you stick around, we'll have some maybe surprise music events later this year. So a lot going on there. It's a it's a really cool piece of the program. That's great.
Mark Johnson:When you look at these personalized offers, you know how does voice of the customer come into play with this, like listening to feedback, potentially of a different F1 or NASCAR or, you know, is that something you guys do? Or and how do you look at voice of the customer Regarding your customer loyalty and customer experience strategies? Yeah, it's absolutely critical and foundation to any loyalty program, any product experience. So you know, I think we really build off the foundation of, you know, all of our years of history of listening to our customer, being on the forefront of any trends and their tastes and passions. I mean we do a lot of you know, focused look at what, what customers are doing. You know, in the last couple years have been some interesting Elements going on with with bleacher traveler, pet friendly travel, group travel, as we've talked about before, and then for for hotels or loyalty programs, this instant gratification gamification. How do we take advantage of that and make it fun? That's ultimately what this should be.
Mark Johnson:So you know we really take a look at, you know, all of our offerings, make sure we get information on what our active products are, whether that's in social media, post-a surveys, other research moments, in more emergent group like Gen Z travelers, and kind of take that in as we build our innovation strategy and we're all into testing new concepts, taking new approaches out there and then quickly scaling them across our 7300 hotel. So that's our process. But we definitely you got to start with the customer and what they're, what they're into Excellent. When you look at all the new enhancements you've made to the program, what features do you see members leveraging most and getting the most value out of? Yeah, no, first and foremost, I think our members are really dreaming of the next day.
Mark Johnson:How do we build those features that can get them to their aspirational travel destinations even faster, and talked about the flexible slider in some ways, that if you have 5,000 points, you can start seeing value and go to these really exciting properties that we're opening across the world. For example, we have the Conrad Los Angeles just opened earlier this year, embassy Suites Aruba, the world D&D I mentioned. We have new Curios, which is our collection brand, hotel Matera in Madrid. We have new Hilton's in Okinawa and we have some new hotels coming. One of our newest brands, tempo in Times Square, is opening very soon. I think, making ways to understand what those properties are, using your points really quickly, pulling them with your friends those are ways to get to the Hilton hospitality even faster. Another technology side I think that's a lot of what we've seen. The digital key share has been wildly popular in exact abuse case. You mentioned that automated complimentary room upgrade experience is unique to us in the industry and then really just getting those points transfers to unlock that stays or some things I'm seeing across our membership base that they love.
Mark Johnson:A question we'd love to ask is, especially someone who has the passion that you have for the industry, right, you have to work for a great brand, as you mentioned earlier Hilton, and also customer loyalty, which is, I think, is one of the most dynamic fields to work in. You get to talk to smart people about smart things, innovation and human behavior. But when you look at loyalty, there are a couple brands that are a brand that you may be loyal to or admire, and if so, why? Yeah, I actually am. As a apparently two young kids, starbucks is, even before kids, always been an admirer of what they've done with their loyalty experience Just earned some stars this morning from there's a Starbucks down here at the Hilton headquarters office. So I think they do some really fun things with their promotions, like Starbucks for Life if you use that, and their promotional offers in their app I think are really fun to use. But I'm kind of a sucker in general for a good game and earning points could be equally as fun as we're dating points. So that fun cycle, if you want to call it that for a product, is unique. With Starbucks you can do that daily and as a dad of two kids, it's certainly want to have some fun while caffeinating and a really cool user experience. It's kind of what I think is interesting. I think there's a lot of parallels to the really seamless digital check-in key share that we have. And how do you make digital fun and engaging beyond functionals? I admire them for that.
Mark Johnson:What can Loyalty 360 do to help you and your team regarding your customer loyalty journey? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think being a member of Loyalty 360, Hilton and our team members really benefit from being a part of that discussion of the latest trends, as we talked about before in loyalty, and just getting dialogue across the industry leading brands is super helpful to those leaders like myself and my team. Events like the Loyalty 360 expo really gives us opportunities to come together, exchange ideas, just find out what's going on in the across the industry and highlight some of the work we've been doing and innovating on, like we shared automated upgrades early this year to the broader industry group. So it's really just great to have that spark of creative thinking across our industry peers and I think loyalty 360 helps unlock that for us.
Mark Johnson:Brad, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today. It was great getting to meet you. Hearing a little bit about you, your new kids and the passion you have, not only Hilton but also customer loyalty, is great to hear because sometimes that passion isn't there with brands in a way that it is definitely with you and Hilton. So thank you for sharing and look forward to hearing more from Hilton through the remainder of 2023. And thank you, everyone else, for listening. Have a wonderful day and look forward to having you back on another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series. Have a wonderful day.