According to the latest TravelClick data, loyalty program members account for nearly 80% of all room nights booked through a hotel's website (Brand.com). This accentuates the value of this customer segment, given a loyalty guest's propensity to book through the hotel's lowest cost distribution channel.

　　The hotel industry outlook for the top 25 North American Markets is showing an increase of 2.3% in committed occupancy for June 2013 - May 2014, based on group commitments and individual reservations on the books as of May 26, 2013 compared to the same time last year. The group segment is up 1.6% in room nights committed (contracted). New group business added over the last month (pace) has been stronger than recent months, up 6.6% over the comparable period last year. Transient room nights booked is up 4.1% compared to the same time last year. Average daily rate (ADR) is growing slightly more than occupancy, up 3.4% based on reservations currently on the books for 2013.

　　For the second quarter of 2013 (April - June), overall committed occupancy is up 4.1% in the top 25 markets. Committed occupancy for the group segments is up 1.2% and the transient segment is up 5.6% compared to a year ago. Average daily rate for the second quarter is up 3.5% over the same time last year. Business segment ADR, which includes weekday transient negotiated and retail segments, is up 2.8%. Leisure segment ADR, which includes transient discount, qualified and wholesale segments, is up 4.3%.

　　Benchmarking your loyalty program performance

　　We collect transactional reservation and stay data from those chains and independent hotels that participate in our industry demand data initiative. One interesting attribute we can track in this data is whether a hotel reservation or stay is for a guest who participates in that hotel's loyalty program. It is obvious that winning guest loyalty and keeping it are critical to your success. You are undoubtedly focused on expanding the ranks of your loyalty program members. And you know that gaining their membership is the first step, but consistently winning their business is the goal. We thought it would be helpful to provide some updated statistics on loyalty segment performance, to help you benchmark your results to the broader industry performance. For this discussion, we will focus on transient demand only.

　　Over the first five months of 2013, transient room nights grew 4% year over year. The loyalty customer portion of transient room nights, however, grew by 9%. The room nights from non-loyalty customers actually fell by 2%. Over that period, room nights from loyalty customers accounted for nearly 60% of total transient room nights. This was up from 56% percent over the same period in 2012. The growth in loyalty demand is certainly a combination of both an expanding loyalty membership as well as more room nights per loyalty program member.

　　It is also interesting to look at the loyalty characteristics of the various booking channels. The table below shows the loyalty versus non-loyalty customer share of transient demand through each primary booking channel.

　　Two channels in particular stand out. First, loyalty program members account for nearly 80% of all room nights booked through a hotel's website (Brand.com). This accentuates the value of this customer segment, given a loyalty guest's propensity to book through the hotel's lowest cost distribution channel. Second, 85% of all room nights booked through a third-party online travel agency (OTA) come from guests not affiliated to the hotel's loyalty program. The OTA channel is an important source of demand, driving 13% of transient room nights year to date. Each of these guests represents an opportunity to add new loyalty program members.

　　The importance of growing and maintaining an effective loyalty program is self-evident. But how do you measure your success? Are you keeping up with your competition in adding loyalty members? Are you driving the right level of demand through the right booking channels from that membership? These are perhaps more challenging questions that require a deeper look into your own performance data as well as available market data.

　　Performance Summary

　　The chart below shows the year-over-year position by market of committed occupancy, reserved occupancy, ADR, and revenue per available room (RevPAR), based on business on the books for the future 12 months. Committed occupancy is group blocks plus transient reservations. Reserved occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR are based only on reservations (group pickup and transient reservations). Shades of green indicate highest performance of the markets, while shades of orange indicate average performance, and shades of red indicate lowest performance.