New Hilton Promotion Rewards Frequent and Infrequent Travelers

The great majority of the many recent hotel promotions have featured bonuses for multiple stays. Typical are the latest offers from Hyatt and Marriott. The former awards a free night or bonus points after two stays; the latter, bonus points after the second stay.

That two-or-more-stays requirement means that infrequent travelers need not apply. It's perfectly understandable that companies would wish to attract and reward more rather than less active customers. But faced with persistent low occupancy rates and high levels of price-sensitivity, I'm convinced the hotels have been missing an opportunity to generate more business from occasional travelers by offering incentives for single stays.

Hilton apparently agrees with me, at least in part.

The hotel chain's new promotion plays both to more and to less frequent travelers, offering a choice of bonuses appropriate to each.

Infrequent travelers can choose to earn double points for stays, including the first one, at more than 3,300 participating Hilton family hotels.

And at the other end of the spectrum, road warriors can earn 25,000 bonus points after every four stays. In either case, there's a maximum of 75,000 bonus points that can be earned during the promotion, which is in effect between October 5 and December 31.

You must register for one offer or the other, and they are not combinable.

This more inclusive type of promotion, with something for everybody, strikes me as smart marketing—good for both consumers and for Hilton. If I'm right, millions of occasional travelers are hoping that Hilton's example will be emulated by the other major hotel groups.