Omni’s new loyalty overhaul positions hotels to behave more like airlines
It might not have the biggest or best-known loyalty program out there, but Omni Hotels & Resorts revealed Thursday the first widespread changes to its Select Guest loyalty program in a decade — and it will likely have ramifications for the entire hotel orbit.
The revamped Select Guest loyalty program rewards spending over stays, meaning you can theoretically buy your way up to the highest loyalty tier in a single stay if you really want to plunk down a lot of money at your favorite Omni hotel. The program also includes new names for each loyalty tier: Gold, Platinum and Black have been replaced by Insider, Champion and Icon, respectively.
Omni's leadership team says the change is geared toward meeting the evolution of the traveling public as well as bringing in new customers to the company's loyalty ecosystem.
"We think that the customer has evolved, our brand has evolved, our products evolved and, therefore, how we want to shape the program should evolve as well," said Josh Belkin, Omni's vice president of loyalty and customer engagement, in an interview with TPG ahead of the launch. "That's really the crux or the emphasis of why we're making these changes."
What's new with the Omni Select Guest loyalty program
Under Omni's prior loyalty program structure, guests would have to stay a certain number of nights to move up the ranks. While entry-level Gold status could be achieved just by joining the Select Guest loyalty program, the top-tier Black status was only achieved after staying 30 nights at an Omni hotel or resort.
The platform now moves to a spending-based earning structure, and free nights are awarded by accruing 100 Omni Credits. Travelers can earn Omni Credits for every night stayed or every $100 spent during a stay on meals, golf, spa treatments or other on-property amenities.
Under the new program, members who simply join the program will enjoy benefits like free basic Wi-Fi, free bottled water upon arrival and a welcome drink. Further, members will also get access to Omni's on-property Loyalty Ambassadors, who serve as the point of contact for loyalty members even prior to arrival and work to customize a stay. All Members can earn Omni Credits that can be redeemed for a free night at any Omni hotel or resort.
Spending $1,000 moves a member up to Insider status, which comes with complimentary daily beverages and two items pressed per stay or two shoeshines for free. This does appear to be a regression in the program, however, as free clothes pressing and free shoeshines were included in the entry-level member status as soon as a second stay with Omni. Members as well as Insiders get 5 Omni Credits per room night. The main perk here is how swiftly a traveler can start achieving loyalty status with Omni, as it previously required 10 nights to move beyond an entry-level tier.
Moving up the status food chain, Omni Champion status is achieved after members spend at least $4,000. The Omni Credit earning rate doubles here with 10 credits earned per room night, and Champion members also get added benefits like a free room-type level upgrade, based on availability, as well as check-in as early as 1 p.m. and checkout as late as 3 p.m., based on availability. Champion members also get daily free bottled water, a daily beverage delivered in the morning and free pressing or shoeshines for up to four items. Early check-in and the beverage delivery appear to be new additions to this midlevel loyalty status.
Loyalty members will achieve the highest Omni status, Icon, after spending $8,000. This status comes with the double earning rate of 10 Omni Credits per room night as well as 2 Omni Credits for every $100 of purchases — making earning free nights significantly faster. Icon members get free upgrades of two room category levels, and early check-in can begin as soon as 9 a.m. and late checkout can go as late as 6 p.m. These members also get free premium Wi-Fi and unlimited complimentary pressings and shoeshines.
One of the marquee offerings for Icon and Champion is a nightly door hanger benefit, where members will get a door hanger to redeem on morning beverages in the on-site cafe, a morning beverage delivery straight to the guest room or beer, wine and cocktails in the bar. While the door hangers aren't necessarily new, cocktail redemptions are a newer featured that rolled out in mid-2023. Icon members will also still get the chef-created food amenities previously offered under Omni's Black status, but these will be more of a bespoke experience going forward.
"It's based on your own personal preferences," Belkin said. "It's not the same for everybody, so you can set your preferences: Do you prefer sweet to savory? Do you prefer healthy? The chef will craft something along one of those profiles."
Takeaways on Omni's new program
Hotel rates, especially in the higher-end tier Omni operates within, are high. Omni's push to spending-based loyalty tier thresholds is a winner for certain hotel guests, especially during peak travel times. These hotels tend to be destinations for either conferences or for leisure getaways — types of travel that typically see more on-property spending. Having that spending go toward earning status is a good thing for travelers — and can quickly net a guest Omni loyalty status.
Further, we're watching to see if this is a sign of where the broader hotel loyalty system will go. Airlines are already rewarding total spending over miles flown, so it's not out of the question for more hotels to move toward a spending-based loyalty structure over one that rewards heads in beds.
As for Omni, we're also watching to see what else this program can do. Smaller programs need to up their wow factor to woo travelers away from the juggernauts that are Marriott Bonvoy or Hilton Honors.
"When we get into loyalty, I think one of the coolest things that we offer is really the tight integration of owner, operator and brand," Kurt Alexander, Omni's president, told TPG earlier this year. "We alone can do things that no other brand can do."
Room upgrades, curated food experiences and some of the best early check-in and late checkout times we've seen — while certainly nice — aren't exactly the stuff of loyalty rocket science. But Alexander hinted there were one-of-a-kind, only-at-Omni offerings that might build upon the brand's owner-operated spas and golf courses at the hotels and resorts. That might be offered, but it isn't necessarily showing up yet in the public-facing award tiers.
When asked about what happened to some of those pie-in-the-sky loyalty offerings teased earlier this year, Belkin implied there could be more coming down the pipeline as far as experiential offerings go.
"Nothing particular now, but I see a loyalty program as a living, breathing thing to constantly keep evolving," Belkin said. "Considering that Omni has this deep heritage in experiences and so many things to offer, yes, it's something we'll certainly take a further look at."
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