To assess the state of customer loyalty today Facebook IQ surveyed 14,700 American adults about their loyalty to suppliers in five verticals including hotels.
Across verticals, they found that 77% of people are brand-loyal to varying degrees: 37% (dubbed Brand Loyalists) say they make repeat purchases and are loyal to a supplier, while another 40% (Repeat Purchasers) say they make repeat purchases but aren’t loyal to a specific supplier.
Here’s what they found about loyalty to hotel brands today:
Drivers of loyalty:
- Brand Loyalists – driven by emotion
- Service (23%)
- Trust (21%)
- Repeat Purchasers – driven by function
- Location (31%)
- Price (30%)
Millennials face unique barriers to loyalty: compared with Boomers, Millennials are twice as likely to cite difficulty in reaching or contacting a hotel as a barrier to loyalty.
Likelihood to be loyal increases as household income increases: people with HHIs of $150K+ are 32% more likely to be loyal than those whose HHI is <$35K.
The top words used by Brand Loyalists to describe the brands they love:
- Quality
- Fun
- Good
- Affordable
34% of new parents describe themselves as loyal to hotel brands vs. 24% of non-parents.
Social media: People who use Facebook more than 5 times a day are 1.25X more likely to be loyal that those who use FB “at least once a month”.
That difficulty in reaching a hotel seems to be a barrier to loyalty that’s specific to Millennials probably means that hotels need to do better in communicating one-to-one in real time. Millennials are digital natives, and they want whatever they want now.
- David
