A Lesson in Analytics with Starwood
Travelfli met with Starwood Resorts on the second day of our trip to NYC. Starwood is one of the largest hotel and leisure companies in the world with over 897 hotels with approximately 275,000 rooms in approximately 100 different countries (according to their site).
They’ve recently launched SPG flights, which in my opinion, revolutionizes hotel-based frequent flyer programs. With SPG flights, members can book a ticket last minute without any of the restrictions or availability issues that are commonplace in award booking with the airlines. Basically if there is an award seat available, you’ll get it.
This is Starwood’s way of extending to airline bookings the “no blackout dates” policy currently in place for room stays. Typically hotels pay hotel franchisers for booking a room with awards, and it looks like they’ve taken the same strategy and applied it to airlines. So Starwood is essentially paying for tickets directly from the airlines (just like a CapitalOne or Chase Bank co-branded credit card loyalty program) to lock in redemption without blackout dates.
Dan and I were really excited to meet with Starwood because we view them as true innovators in frequent flyer programs, particularly with the new release of SPG. We met with Susan Weigel, the Vice President of Analytics at Starwood. Susan’s team handles all of the forecasting, planning, distribution analytics and modeling, which allows Starwood to remain at the forefront of the hotel industry with new products, such as SPG, and new brands, such as Loft and Element (boutique hotels that have a specific niche target demographic).
Our meeting with Susan provided a refreshing, different perspective because it was the first of it’s kind with an analytics expert. Susan thinks data is fascinating and she walked us through a number of data points she would like to see Travelfli develop. She even volunteered to connect us with a few experts from Forrester and Hudson Crossing as we build out the analytics side of our business.
This meeting was extremely valuable to us because we realize the long-term potential revenue stream in selling our data. We see a huge opportunity in our ability to collect and make available generalizable data on the trends and habits of frequent flyers, as well as the quality and usability of the loyalty programs themselves – both on a level that has never been possible before now.
Thanks to Susan for advising us on the appropriate approach to take on the analytics front as well as her insight into how pricing and subscriptions might work. We are really looking forward to working with Starwood as the site goes live!
