Travelfli Meetings: Intercontinental Hotel Group
Travelfli initiated a series of meetings last week that will involve all of the top airlines, hotels, and credit card companies in the development of our site from the outset. Our business has a strong value proposition for the consumer and we’ve been engaging frequent flyers since the very beginning to help us build a useful product. We think it is just as important to create a product that supports our travel partners and provides a value add for their business as well. The overall goals of these meetings are to a) better understand their businesses, b) introduce them to Travelfli, c) identify mutual opportunities, and d) pave the way for solid partnerships.
Our first trip was to Atlanta, Georgia to meet with Intercontinental, Delta, and AirTran. Side note: we flew Frontier. No baggage charges (yet). Soft drinks are still free. Snacks are not, although they were worth $3 IMHO. Overall, the experience was great. Despite being in the troughs of bankruptcy, the airline still falls at the top of my list for superior customer service and on-time flights.
The initial meeting took place with Intercontinental, the world’s largest hotel group by number of rooms. The group manages and/or franchises over 3,500 hotels and 535,000 guest rooms in seven brands, including Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Intercontinental, Candlewood Suites, Staybridge Suites, and Indigo. We met with Mary Dogan, the Director of Loyalty Marketing for the America’s. She heads up all the global partnerships for Priority Club Rewards, the world’s largest and oldest hotel loyalty program, with over 25 million members worldwide.
Mary’s been with the company for 14 years (although you would never know it because she is so young), and has played a key role in the continued success of Priority Club Rewards. I was instantly impressed with her mature, sensible outlook on their customer needs and her steadfast commitment to making the program transparent and flexible. Mary and her group at Intercontinental have worked hard to make sure their points have as much utility as possible and are dead easy to redeem. For instance, their wide variety of redemption options includes the “Any Hotel, Anywhere” program, which allows members to redeem points for stays with their competition! This policy decision and others illustrate their true commitment eliminating any reason for members to join another hotel loyalty program.
Mary was incredibly receptive to the Travelfli product and provided us with a ton of great feedback on what she liked, disliked, and how we could make the product even better for frequent flyers and hotels (in order to protect the privacy of our partners, we’ll share themes from our learnings at the end).
She helped validate our assumptions that award programs are extremely important to hotels and they are always interested in new ways to keep their users engaged and using their points. We are looking forward to working with Intercontinental and want to thank Mary for a great meeting!
IHG’s beautiful tropical foyer
