Marriott claims to have a quarter billion members of the Bonvoy program. What that means is they just have a lot of guests across a lot of hotels, and offer a discount for joining the program.

It doesn’t mean guests stay more than once! And Marriott doesn’t publicly release how many ‘active’ members they have (or how they define active, such as points-earning or redemption in the last year or two). In this, Marriott is no different than other chains. Here are the member counts of hotel loyalty programs:

Program		Members
H Rewards		288 million
Marriott Bonvoy		248 million
Hilton Honors		226 million
Jin Jiang J-Club		200 million
IHG One Rewards		145 million
Wyndham Rewards		120 million
Accor Live Limitless		100 million
Choice Privileges		72 million
Best Western Rewards		64 million
World of Hyatt		58 million
Global Hotel Alliance Discovery		32 million
Radisson Rewards		25 million
MeliaRewards		15 million
Sonesta Travel Pass		7.7 million

Did you realize that H Rewards was the largest program? They actually have over 11,000 hotels. H World Group is also known as Huazhu Group Limited, and they own Deutsche Hospitality in Europe (Steigenberger, MAXX, Jaz in the City, IntercityHotel, Zleep Hotels) but most of their hotels are in China (Ji Hotel, Hanting, Crystal Orange).

Size doesn’t matter, though! It isn’t as important as engagement. And you learn more about a program by looking at total number of members per room that’s part of the brand. Skift put together that data:

Program		Members/Room
H Rewards		243
Global Hotel Alliance Discovery		219
Best Western Rewards		190
Hilton Honors		174
MeliaRewards		160
World of Hyatt		159
Radisson Rewards		159
IHG One Rewards		145
Marriott Bonvoy		143
Wyndham Rewards		142
Jin Jiang J-Club		139
Accor Live Limitless		117
Choice Privileges		112
Sonesta Travel Pass		87

A small program might have fewer members per room even if it’s a great program, because guests still might not join thinking that the program isn’t relevant to them – the odds they’ll have occasion to stay again with the chain may be low. So smaller programs at the top of this metric are impressive.

Skift’s Sean O’Neill says “most hotel loyalty programs are winning the headcount war but losing the engagement battle” because the number of room nights booked per member each year is declining, from 1.8 in 2016 to 1.1 two years and and now 1 night per member.

• Hotels are adding members to their database
• But these aren’t repeat guests

Hotel chains offer a discount, often just a couple percent, to ‘members of their program’ so of course people join. There’s no loyalty element to this, or even repeat purchase intent. It’s ‘sign up to get an immediate discount’. So of course the number of room nights per member has declined!

Hilton launched its ‘stop clicking around’ campaign in February 2016, Marriott launched member rates in April 2016, and IHG came out with ‘your rate by IHG Rewards Club’ in May 2016. Choice followed that same month.

This was part about undercutting OTA commissions, and part a way to circumvent ‘rate parity’ agreements (requiring members to be logged in to book these rates). But it was also a way of driving loyalty signups which are permission-based marketing arrangements, to sell future stays but also drive cobrand card acquisition.

When everyone – even, and especially once a year guests – are who’s being added to the program, you would expect the number of nights per member to fall.

Hilton’s penetration seems impressive, especially considering that the program itself is not! They keep devaluing their points significantly, and they don’t treat their most frequent guests especially well (no promise of suites, no guaranteed late checkout and in the U.S. a credit that generally no longer covers the cost of breakfast).

Conrad Bora Bora Nui Breakfast

GHA Discovery consistently surprises me with this metric. I like the program in many ways, and I especially like many of their small brands. And how does Best Western Rewards perform so well? Hyatt also hits above its weight.

The Lyle, Washington DC

Alila Marea

Marriott clearly underperforms and I think we all likely know why. Meanwhile, nobody really bothers with Choice Privileges.