kabarsula Hotel loyalty grows up: from points program to profit engine bandar SLOT INDONESIA
Hotel loyalty used to be a marketing line item – a card in the wallet, a few points on the bill. A cluster of announcements over the past fortnight suggests the industry now sees it very differently: as infrastructure, as a revenue driver and, increasingly, as a technology problem.
In Australia, the clearest example is Qantas. On 30 September, Qantas Loyalty announced a strategic technology partnership with Expedia Group to overhaul the digital booking experience across Qantas Hotels & Holidays and Jetstar Holidays.
Qantas goes composable
Under the agreement, Expedia Group B2B will power the end-to-end experience, built on its Composable Agentic Template. The pitch to customers is simplicity: a single place to book hotels and holiday packages, earn and redeem Qantas Points, and manage the entire trip.
The feature list leans heavily on personalisation and integration. Qantas says the new platform will bring deeper integration into the Qantas App and improved digital self-servicing, along with machine learning-powered property and holiday recommendations. Holiday packages can be bundled with premium cabin seating and partner codeshare flights – a notable step for a program whose strength has always been the flying side of the relationship. Qantas and its hotel suppliers will also get what the release describes as first-of-its-kind connectivity options.
Qantas Loyalty executive manager, business to consumer, Jayne Davey, said Qantas Hotels and Holidays plays a key role in the group ecosystem, “allowing millions of customers to connect their flights, stays and travel experiences into one seamless journey”.
She said the Expedia tie-up provides “the foundation we need to continuously innovate, deploy new features, and support our long-term growth strategy”.
That last point may be the real story. Access to Expedia Group B2B’s technology means ongoing new releases, so that Qantas Hotels & Holidays keeps evolving with the market rather than relying on periodic rebuilds. Expedia Group B2B senior vice president of sales Carolina Cabero framed it as a long-term relationship built on trust, with one integrated platform connecting supply, pricing, payments, loyalty and digital experiences.
For hotel suppliers, the release promises “new growth opportunities”, though it stops short of detailing commercial terms or what the connectivity changes will mean in practice. Those are questions the trade will be keen to have answered. Build and integration work is under way, with the upgraded platform scheduled to launch in the first half of 2027.
Accor Plus: loyalty you pay for
If Qantas is betting on technology, Accor Plus is betting on a different idea: that travellers will pay upfront for value they can use straight away.
On 1 October, Accor Plus marked the first anniversary of ALL Accor+ Explorer, its premium annual travel loyalty subscription, by expanding into 10 new countries – Egypt, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and Iraq. The move is part of a wider push adding more than 150 hotels in the Middle East and taking the network to more than 1,400 participating properties across 30 countries. Earlier this year, Explorer launched in the United Arab Emirates, taking Accor Plus beyond Asia Pacific for the first time, and rolled out fully in Japan.
The numbers Accor Plus is putting forward are sizeable. Membership has grown to more than 485,000 travellers, who booked more than 3.8 million room nights in the past year. Australia led the way, followed by Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore – a reminder that the program began here in 1994 and that this market remains its anchor.
Growth elsewhere was strong. Among the 15 destinations with the most member room nights, year-on-year growth reached 41 per cent in Mainland China, 20 per cent in South Korea, 18 per cent in India and 15 per cent in Japan. Outside Asia Pacific, room nights rose 21 per cent in the UK and 46 per cent in France. The most-booked hotels in 2026 included Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour, Swissôtel The Stamford in Singapore, Sofitel Bali Nusa Dua and Pullman Tokyo Tamachi.
The membership offers two Stay Plus free nights, up to 50 per cent off selected stays through Red Hot Rooms, 15 per cent off stays at more than 5,000 Accor hotels worldwide, and 30 per cent off dining and 15 per cent off beverages for up to 10 guests in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Members also receive 30 Status Nights a year, delivering ALL Accor Gold status or a faster path to a higher tier. Dining benefits now cover more than 1,800 restaurants and 1,300 bars.
Accor Plus chief executive Emilie Couton said the promise at launch was “real value, from day one”, adding that members now have more ways to experience what they love about travel as the network extends into the Middle East.
The case for hotels is where this gets interesting. Accor Plus says room revenue generated by members rose by more than 20 per cent, and that members stayed five times as frequently as non-members. It also says members can receive an average of three times their annual fee in value through stay and dining benefits. As the release notes, those figures are the company’s own: the revenue growth is based on member bookings in an August 2026 year-to-date report, and the value claim on estimated savings by active members.
Partnerships are part of the model, too. During the first year, Accor Plus continued to strengthen ties across financial services and retail, including American Express in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and India, CIMB Niaga in Indonesia and Woori Card in South Korea, plus a new Visa partnership across selected Asian markets. To mark the anniversary, eligible new members who join by 31 October will receive 3,000 bonus ALL Accor Reward points.
The playbook: strategy before rewards
While Qantas and Accor Plus show what loyalty looks like at scale, a white paper released on 8 October asks a more basic question: what should a hotel actually be trying to achieve?
“Loyalty Reimagined” was written by dailypoint founder and chief executive Michael Toedt – dailypoint is a guest data and CRM platform for hospitality – and Silke Bartsch, professor of market-oriented corporate management at Hochschule Mittweida and Campus M University in Germany. Its argument is blunt. Loyalty, Toedt said, is “often misunderstood as a points program when it should be a comprehensive business strategy”.
Loyalty is often misunderstood as a points program when it should be a comprehensive business strategy.
The paper’s guidelines read like a corrective to the industry’s habits:
- Objectives first. Hotels should decide whether they want more direct bookings, better retention or higher guest lifetime value before they design a single reward.
- Measure it. Programs need KPIs such as retention rate, revenue per customer, loyalty contribution margin and direct-booking ratio.
- Quality over quantity. A big membership is no guarantee of success; the test is whether the program generates revenue rather than subsidising demand that would have arrived anyway.
- Build around direct bookings. Exclusive member rates and personalised offers can reduce dependence on intermediaries and strengthen the guest relationship.
- Emotional loyalty counts. Trust, personalisation and consistency matter as much as points and discounts.
- Technology is the enhancer. A centralised guest profile, data integration, segmentation, automation and AI-supported analytics underpin personalisation – but recognition and trust drive loyalty.
The paper also makes a case for sustainability, citing Bartsch’s figure that 56 per cent of travellers are more likely to book accommodation offering sustainable incentives, and suggesting rewards for behaviour before, during and after a stay – such as skipping daily linen changes or using low-carbon transport home. One recommendation will be a talking point for independents: they should consider launching their own scheme rather than joining a group or franchise program that could add cost rather than income.
One theme, three approaches
Put side by side, the three announcements describe an industry converging on the same conclusion from different directions. Qantas is investing in the platform layer, so that its members can book, earn and manage trips in one place. Accor Plus is selling loyalty as a paid product with a clear value equation, and claims the hotel revenue to back it. And the dailypoint paper tells operators to start with business objectives and measure the return.
The common thread is that points alone are no longer the point. Data, personalisation, direct relationships and provable contribution to the bottom line are what separate a strategic asset from a marketing campaign. For the travel trade, the implication is worth watching: as airlines, hotel groups and technology providers tighten their own booking journeys, the loyalty relationship increasingly sits with whoever owns the platform.
Qantas will be the first test locally. If the upgraded Hotels & Holidays platform lands in the first half of 2027 as planned, the market will get a clear view of whether a technology partnership can do for hotel loyalty what the flying program has done for years.
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