Hyatt
Revolutionizing the loyalty experience for a beloved global hospitality chain
Creating connections and fostering deeper emotional relationships with members
As larger competitors further expand their global footprint, brands need to find meaningful ways to create connections and foster deeper emotional relationships with their members.
Hyatt was seeking to invest in their loyalty program as a way to create meaningful connections with priority travelers while leaning into their brand purpose – to care for people so they can be their best.
The goal? Develop an innovation roadmap for World of Hyatt consisting of new loyalty benefits and experience to ensure the program ‘punches above its weight’. And craft a deeper understanding of priority loyalty member segments through ‘Jobs to be Done’ research to ensure the program can continue to evolve with the ever-changing needs of the program’s members.
While loyalty programs are a significant part of the hospitality experience, there is little differentiation from one program to the next
With similar structures and comparable benefits, each loyalty program offers their members the same experiences across the hospitality industry.
The World of Hyatt program stands out for its commitment to care, and drives significant value for members – and for the business. However, given their smaller global footprint, they recognized a need to further invest in their loyalty program to remain competitive with peers.
Our engagement consisted of 3 phases to unpack the dimensions of care and create a roadmap for developing new, innovative loyalty benefits:
01 | Uncover Insights: Enrich understanding of World of Hyatt audience segments through Jobs to be Done.
02 | Generate Ideas: Iteratively develop new benefit concepts to drive deeper member engagement across World of Hyatt.
03 | Validate Concepts: Test concepts across audiences to inform benefit prioritization and roadmap development.
To begin this process, Lippincott engaged in an expansive exploration to ensure a good mix of member perspectives loyalty analyses, and internal Hyatt expertise. We spoke to World of Hyatt participants across five key customer segments, which formed the basis of our Jobs To Be Done research.
Lippincott uncovered an untapped dimension of care that loyalty members find both compelling and also missing from the current experience. We identified an opportunity to enhance its loyalty program by shifting from traditional, one-dimensional benefits focused on individual care to a more multi-dimensional approach called "Care gifting." This new strategy prioritizes enabling members to extend benefits to those who are important to them, offering emotional and off-premises benefits that create a more compelling and holistic loyalty experience.
This led to the establishment of the “Hierarchy of Care”.
The Hierarchy of Care: All care is not created equal
Care is not a spectrum to be navigated but a hierarchy to be satisfied.
Earning loyalty is long, hard work that travelers expect to be rewarded for. When forced to make a choice, loyalty members prioritize receiving care over gifting care. Extending care to others is a higher-order benefit that can create new meaning in loyalty members’ lives, but it must be non-dilutive; it can’t take away from a rich care receiving experience.
Above all, Care Gifting is all about empowering loyalty members to be the hero.
What we found
Our findings also highlighted distinct innovation territories to inform how Care Gifting could come to life at World of Hyatt.
01 | Extending the reach of your status: A benefit shared – particularly at no cost to you – is an exponentially more valuable benefit.
02 | Deeply personalized experiences: What’s important to you depends on the the purpose of your trip, as well as who is – and isn’t –traveling with you.
03 | Connect with those back home: Connection is not just about staying in touch, it’s about maintaining the role you play in your life back home.
04 | Expanding ways to use status: Hyatt can uniquely enable and support loyal members by creating flexible, rewarding, and unexpected ways to gift and redeem their status and points.
With these findings, we transformed broad concepts into concrete ideas through multiple rounds of benefit ideation and validation research.
The result?
A 2024 program redesign to redefine Care at World of Hyatt
New benefits and experiences create meaningful opportunities to engage loyalty members and their loved ones.
More Milestones: Expand opportunities to earn Milestone Rewards to 150 nights to reward the most seasoned travelers.
Gifting rewards: Loyalty members can ‘be the hero’ by gifting loyalty rewards such as Club access, suite upgrades, and more to their loved ones.
Extending Status: Members have greater flexibility to extend their elite status to loved ones, with up to 10 giftable Guest of Honor Awards per year.
Taste of Globalist: Non-globalist members can use Guest of Honor awards on themselves to experience Globalist benefits before reaching Globalist membership tier.
Business Earnings: Professionals planning events or booking travel on behalf of others can earn two status-qualifying night credits for every $5,000 USD in eligible spend with Hyatt.
Since launch in early 2024, these enhancements have received positive reviews for their ingenuity and value for loyalty members.