Hotel loyalty members rely on mobile to communicate.

This article is about a study made by Loylogic, the leading provider of loyalty technology solutions; called "The 2010 Frequent Traveler Survey". This survey was completed between September 17th and October 15th 2010, and, reflects the opinion of 36 000 frequent travelers (members of at least one loyalty program).
The main goal of this survey was to better understand the point of view of these 36 000 frequent travelers on their loyalty programs, their ways of using these programs...

The main objective of a loyalty program in our sector is to drive the customer loyalty and to make the guest want to continue to choose to stay at our brand's hotel again and again. Many groups like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Starwood ... offer a loyalty program.

One principal question required to these 36 000 travelers is "Which method they prefer to redeem points or check their account balance?".
The results of this study indicate to us that 58% of these travelers prefer to earn and redeem points or to check their loyalty program balances online (to use internet) ; 20% prefer their smart phones to do that; 11% of these travelers prefer to check directly at the hotel. 4% and 3% prefer respectively, SMS text and Facebook.

I think that it is very important and interesting for hotels. With this study, we can better understand which method the members of our loyalty program use in order to interact with this program, so, the method we need to use if we want to interact very well with our members.
Today internet and smart phones are more and more important and, this survey proves it. Indeed, 78% of the 36 000 frequent travelers questioned use internet or their smartphones to earn or redeem points or to check their account balances.
So, for 2011, I think that hoteliers should to focus their loyalty programs' strategy on these two interactions tools which are internet and smart phones. Moreover, the two last answers of this top 5 are related to the use of internet or / and smart phone.
As it is said in this article, today we want and we feel the need to be connected "anytime,anywhere" that it proves the internet importance, but also, the importance of smart phones with which we can go on internet.

To conclude, I think that it is essential for the hoteliers to have with spirit that internet and smart phones must have an important part in their marketing strategies, their strategies of loyalty programs (development, interaction with members...)...