Hyatt fired their VP of communications - hope it wasn't our fault
prweek.com/article/1416991/hyatt-hotels-globa...
prweek.comPosted Nov 29, 2016, 11:52 AM UTC
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prweek.comThey need to fire whoever spearheaded that World of Hyatt nonsense ....
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They had such a good opportunity to capitalize on real fears of Marriott gutting the popular SPG program. Instead they fuck up the program while Marriott knocks the acquisition out of the park with incorporating SPG loyalty features in their own program and the 1:3 transfer ratio.
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To paraphrase Zero Punctuation, it's like Hyatt walked out onto the stage of the International Don't Fuck Up championship, then proceeded to shiv itself in the stomach 30 times while screaming "It's for your own good!", after which Marriott+Starwood came out and said "I don't want to stab myself, that (ahem) hurts".
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You would have thought that they'd do some due diligence and research previous AMAs, but clearly they had no idea what the fuck they were doing.
God it was awful.
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Research? Clearly it's just a live FAQ that millions of Millennials will enjoy reading!
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There's no chance a large company fires a VP over a Reddit AMA, unless they said something highly controversial. Simply giving canned responses isn't even close to a fireable offense
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She wasn't the one answering the questions. People are speculating that perhaps she was the one who suggested doing the AMA in the first place and set everything up.
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Even so, there's no way a company is going to fire someone that high up for something like that. Was the AMA bad? Yeah, they didn't give great answers. But it wasn't controversial or bad enough to fire a VP over
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the AMA for sure wasn't the only thing that did her in.
But they have been getting killed across the board and can't seem to figure out how to communicate back against the wave of criticism. So I'm sure there was a lot going on behind the scenes trying to deal with all the negative backlash and she just wasn't getting it done.
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IME it's way more likely a dysfunctional company fires scapegoats. If they knew who to fire they'd have people who can actually fix problems. But I could be talking out my neck 🤔
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Well it could be worse if the one answering the question was a superior. Subjecting your boss to that AMA could have been the last straw.
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Except Hyatt probably has hundreds of VPs.
Like everyone that isn't just a mid level manager is going to be a VP.
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No, they probably don't. The only companies that have hundreds of VP's tend to be financial services institutions where everyone gets the VP title. In traditional companies, there's not a million VPs
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Well, the fact that they had resorted to doing an ama to try to convince skeptical members that this new program wasn't all that bad speaks volumes. Things were definitely going badly before the ama. This might have been the last straw.
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I think it's more likely the case that this is one of many questionable decisions from this person, rather than a sole reason they were terminated.
If it was her biggest mistake, yeah, I don't see how she would be fired over this. But the entire communications strategy for this program has been horrendous, and the solution of a "reddit AMA" to deal with it was laughable.
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There's no chance a large company fires a VP over a Reddit AMA
A lot of large companies have more VPs than toilets, it's not like the US government that just has one.
But this could simply have been the last straw, if the performance on this occasion is indicative of performance in the past.
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That AMA was a perfect example of how higher level corporate jobs can be filed with people who are seriously incompetent. In some companies kissing ass and making the right connections is all you need.
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She didn't make the right connections then; she came from Pepsi and left after one year as a VP.
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I'm talking about the guy answering the AMA questions. She actually shielded herself by not answering the questions directly.
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There's a great divide in our workforce right now. It's not millennial and gen x'ers/boomers, it's different than that. There are those who "get it" and those who do not. Plenty of boomers and x'ers who get it, and more than a few millenials who don't. The churning community gets it. Those who think credit cards = evil do not. That AMA was so tone deaf, it's clear she didn't get it. Now she can go work somewhere where people who don't get it work, like in a factory.
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Well said. I like Hyatt, and had great hopes for that AMA. Silly me.
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Can you share the link? I'd love to see how terrible it actually was
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looks like an unmitigated disaster.
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My god that is awful
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What didn't she get? How reddit works? I understand their goal; they want to market to consultants/business travelers. Hyatt is betting that they can make more from the top 1% of travelers than the remaining 99% (reasonable expectation). The only thing they 'don't get' is the reddit community.
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The problem is, they're cutting off most travelers because even the top 1% generally can't stay in Hyatt for their new higher night totals because the footprint isn't large enough, so you need to stay with other brands sometimes.
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The automatic upgrade to a suite is huge. As a business traveler, I would consider changing my loyalty for that perk. Although I agree their footprint being so small hurts them a lot.
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how to communicate with neckbeards.
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She wasn't the one answering the AMA?
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no but its implied that she was behind it and orchestrated the whole thing.
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He just wanted to talk about Rampart, and you all ruined it.
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I'm r/outoftheloop - can someone give a tl;dr version of what happened?
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Yeah. Go light a dumpster on fire and youre basically witnessing it.
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Mother of Jesus, referring to the AMA where the guy answered only a handful of questions?? Wtf
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They were all non-answers as well. None of them addressed the fact that everyone had clearly negative feedback and wanted answers.
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Mother of Jesus that's horrendous. Guess I'm thankful for SPG(Marriott)+Hilton gold
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The SVP of Hyatt Loyalty held an AMA to promote their new "branding". He got asked tough questions and didn't answer them. To the questions he did answer they were very easy and his answers seemed totally fake and canned.
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And most of the questions were from accounts that were relatively/completely new. What a shitshow.
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What happened to the AMA? Did it get deleted?
Edit: its here
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They sent an email out for it too? So I assume then that plenty of people signed up to call them out on why it's dogshit now
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They did, but it was day of IIRC. They really fucked up the communication of everything.
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SVP (Senior) is above VP.
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She seemed totally unaware. This is for the best.
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For those asking this is the 'AMA' in question.
I have to assume she set this AMA up and/or handled prepping him.
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Even an intern could have done a better job handling it.
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I doubt that.
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It's ok, Hyatt isn't under 5/24 so they can always churn another VP.
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The slowness, awkwardness, and scarcity (slowist, awkwardist, and scarcitist?) of Hyatt's AMA answers stunk of the replies being written by committee, with lawyers and bosses having a heavy hand in the rewrites. (I work in PR and communications.) The AMA couldn't have been why this person got fired, but it wouldn't have helped.
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Wrong career play to put on SVP in a subculture spotlight without being "prepared". #drunkhyattgirl
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Pretty sure it's not the job of the VP of Communications to design loyalty programs...
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The programs being changed without any communication of why it's good for existing members is a huge bungle on her part.
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What happened?
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An Hyatt SVP held an AMA which was considered to be a bust by many on this sub. You can read it here https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5dagui/hi_reddit_im_jeff_zidell_svp_of_loyalty_for_hyatt/?limit=500
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ouch, any changes to World of Hyatt before launch?
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Just the reddit disaster alone that caters to a niche group seems unlikely to have resulted in this. I doubt their management team knows what reddit is.
That being said, I can't find instances of other similar social media or branding related issues. Perhaps, some internal communication problems that we may not have visibility to.
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I hope it was.
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The AMA was really bad. So bad that I actually sent an email to the CEO of Hyatt to offer some help with communicating (or altering) the implementation of their new loyalty program. Surprisingly enough, he forwarded my email to Jeff (the AMA Guy). I spoke with Jeff on the phone, and the following are cliff notes from that discussion:
Jeff really seemed like a nice guy during a one-on-one conversation. I don't agree with his stance on the branding, but time will tell. In preparing for that call, I tried very hard to come up with another option for the tiers (outside of precious metals/stones). It's much more difficult thank you would think!
Time will tell how this impacts Hyatt. I'll be an interested bystander.
Can you name one single program with churners as targeting audience? ;-)
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how many points do I get for signing up and when can I reach diamond status?
Pshhh, Diamond status... that's old school!
We will start you as a Readerist... and if you forward the email to 60 friends, you can become a Loopholeist!
I've never heard of that site.
Its cancer on a mobile phone.(Reddit app made the layout funny, plus the 2 popups loaded on top of each other so I couldn't close anything) checking it out on chrome it looks better. Thanks for sharing something new to me.We may have different definitions of "cancer." Can you shoot me a PM with the issues you're seeing? Optimizing mobile is not an easy endeavor.
Gift cards
When I used to work in retail, I had no idea what churning was. When someone would buy 4 x $500 Target gift cards I would think "Wow, she has four very lucky grand kids" when I should have been thinking "She is paying with a new SPG card, I wonder what she is going to do with those points"
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There are a lot of "fringe" people like me who come here for good deals but don't do any MS.
I got the Amex platinum 100k point offer from you guys. A few other ones as well.
I personally spend about $1500 a month using credit cards and my business spends around $15k a month using credit cards. That's not much compared to some people or businesses, but it's enough where using the right cards versus the wrong cards can get me a lot of rewards / points / perks.
Then there's the tricks on getting the most out of your points.
I could go to other forums but the whole reason I use reddit is content aggregation so I don't have to go to a dozen different sites for my various interests.
So, the main churning user base might not be anyone's target audience, but some of us are potentially profitable customers for companies.
Honestly a lot of people who find out about the hobby end up not moving too far past the Guide to cheap vacation for newbies. They learn what they need, get the products that best suit their spending patterns/travel goals, and then stop there.
And good on them. Too many people seem to take it far too seriously.
services where you can convert cc to cash, like venmo, paypal, and radpad(ironically)
So I come at this from both a churning and high-value travel perspective. I'm probably part of the demographic they ARE trying to reach - I travel 50+ nights per year for work, and I have enough flexibility that I can decide which chain to send my stays to. Right now I'm SPG Plat because I send my nights there whenever I can.
With SPG merging into Marriott, I'm very concerned the program will get nerfed in 2018. It's great right now, but still no indications what's going to happen in the future, even as I start considering where to put my stays next year (qualifying for 2018). I actually decided after the merger was announced that I'd go for Hyatt, then they nerfed their program too.
I don't see how the new version is better than the old one for top members - it takes more nights for the same benefits you got before. The only difference is they now toss in a couple free nights at low category hotels occasionally and put suites into the upgrade pool - not nothing but also not worth the extra 10+ nights it would take to get to the highest level. I've seen enough hotels redefine "standard" suites to avoid those upgrades to know not to trust this until I see it work for real.
Nothing in this program is about "experiences" - if you want that, you should try a chain like Kimpton (which is also probably getting nerfed soon due to mergers).
What I was really hoping from the AMA, which I didn't get then and still haven't gotten now, is a concrete way in which Jeff thinks this new program is better than the old one, even for those "high value customers." [/rant]
Your perspective is right on. He did not clearly articulate how it was better for the true target market. He tried to tell me on the phone how it would be a significant improvement, but that fell a bit flat. His main thing was the suite upgrade at check-in for Globalists. I asked him if he could guarantee any transparency with that. Basically, as an elite member, I have no way to know if the desk agent is lying about having no more available suites when I check in. I suggested some sort of list like airlines run for first/business upgrades, but he said that would be too complicated on the back end. Either way, your sentiment seems to be shared by many of their actual target market... not enough improvement for the 10+ extra nights, especially with their relatively small footprint.
An upgrade list for the hotel industry would be very untenable. Once a person shows up for a room and occupy it, for the most part, that room can't be used again until the next day. Airlines also have a scheduled departure time, whereas hotels have a flexible arrival time anywhere from the morning of check-in to the wee hours of the following day.
What about refundable rate rooms? What about no-shows? Does an early check-in win against a late check-in? What would the tiebreakers be? You arrive and a suite isn't available, but might be later -- do you wait?
Any transparent list could also undermine their revenue management. If occupancy rates are low, they might offer lower hotel rates. But if the suite upgrade list were transparent, it might entice elites to purchase a night at much lower rates and take advantage of their better rooms, resulting in lower yield.
Yep, all reasons that the upgrade process is muddy at best. I've been Hilton Diamond for six years. Many times, I've been denied room upgrades at what seemed to be a mostly-empty property. It's frustrating to hear that you're guaranteed best available at check in, only to be told that there are no better rooms.
It comes down to trust, and people have expressed a lack of trust in the process. Since this is basically the biggest addition to the top tier, it would help to have some kind of transparency. Although, I have no idea how that would look in practice.
Best available at check in certainly privileges those who get to the hotel earlier, which are not likely to be the highest value customers.
Lets be frank, business travels are the majority of the high value customers. They stay a lot, value the elite benefits to enhance personal travel, and are relatively price insensitive. I have also almost never checked into my hotel before 9pm as a business traveler and it is often after midnight.
It is a simple trade off, if you do best available at check in, you privilege those who get to the hotel early. If you did an upgrade list, presumably based on status and room rate, you privilege the highest value customers. The trade off of the list is that some suites would go empty occasionally (not a big deal and unlikely to be noticed by elites), or go to lower status people who check in very late after a cancellation.
As a business traveler, I am not even sure I want the upgrade priority to change. I don't care about upgrades when I am working. I don't use the extra space or nice view. I want the upgrade when I am on vacation.
You could wait to publish until check in time. Pretty late to be trying to game the system for a lower cost suite. You could also publish only at the hotel, like car rental companies do at airports.
Yep, this is me exactly. SPG Plat and about to book 2017 travel but haven't made up my mind where to take my business. Hyatt was always my number two but I may go with SPG and Kimpton for 2017 and roll the dice on what 2018 looks like for the merger.
I don't see how I'm not high value, I pay full price and spend 40-60 nights in 4-5 star hotels a year.
That's exactly where I'm leaning as well. I've enjoyed my few Kimpton stays and am interested in giving them a shot as my backup chain.
im 8yrs as SPG Platinum and will be seriously pissed if I don't get lifetime. Sticking with SPG for as long as I can...
And that was exactly when the AMA derailed
Hey. Thanks for that update, it puts things into perspective. That being said, he could have said the same things in his AMA instead of doing the canned response thing. Even if we didn't like he had to say, it would have been more successful with truthful answers.
It is disappointing that he didn't use Reddit before the AMA, but I hope this was a lesson learned for Hyatt.
Yeah, I basically told him that. However, Reddit can be very harsh once the mob turns against you. He started that AMA in a similar position to the Points Guy... with a lot of people who want to see him fail and were going to hit him with tough questions. I can only imagine that would quickly turn someone off if it was their first experience with Reddit.
On the phone, I opened our discussion about the AMA by saying, "I saw the AMA. Reddit can be pretty harsh..." To which he responded, "Oh yeah...? You don't say!"
I wouldn't equate TPG to Jeff's AMA. The former was roasting for pandering, selling out, shit advice, etc., the latter were people simply looking for answers to legitimate questions.
Fair point. Either way, once the mob turns angry (after his first corporate-speak response), it's nearly impossible to course-correct. He also didn't try, but really steered right into the skid.
Awesome insight. Thanks for sharing with us. I do completely agree that we aren't any of these guys' target audience. So from that perspective, who gives a sh what we think.
It will be super interesting to see how the Sapphire Reserve evolves over the coming year. Chase got a fair amount of press praising them for understanding millenials by doing so many sign ups with no advertising, even Forbes and Bloomberg. Those 'millenials' were us and the readers of the 'travel hacking' blogosphere. We are terrible customers for a credit card issuer.
AmEx is taking the total opposite strategy as Chase - incredible viral buzz and unprecedented application rates anytime a Plat 100k offer comes alive. AmEx making it a point to show us we're unwanted. Bad millenials says AmEx.
Who will be right? Which approach will be more profitable for these guys in the long run?
Whichever one of them can figure out how to make us profitable while still letting us thinking we're coming out ahead will be a force to be reckoned with. I wonder who that will be?
I mean I'm keeping my CSR, CFU, Freedom and Marriott long term without a doubt, the fees are easier to stomach and I put all my spending on those cards (well not Marriott but you get the idea). There's gotta be some barebones level of profit there I'm sure
I have my jumbo-sized tub of popcorn ready to watch what happens!
Chase is doing it right. They are making the correct choice to get and keep people in their product universe.
They've also done a great job at differentiation within their portfolio. If I weren't going for other card bonuses I would stick with the CS(R), Freedom, FU, and Ink Cash exclusively.
Seems like it. Also seems like a company is finally doing long term (or hell, even medium term) financial planning. Perhaps take a short term hit on redemptions from the 100K CSR bonus, but keep younger customers as they age and increase their salaries. Build that brand loyalty that Amex once dominated at, and you will generate profits in the long run.
I'm trying to remember the stat, but millennials make up the majority of the workforce now. Amex has all but ignored them for the greater part of a decade and is/will be paying the price for it in the years to come.
I'm just curious to see if Chase tries to break into the corporate space, since Amex is pretty much the default for large companies.
Serious headwinds for ax. They just don't get it. I know this is crazy talk but I could see them being an acquisition target in the next 3-5 years. Their business is in trouble and their management is clueless.
http://www.barrons.com/articles/amex-losing-rewards-war-1480137204
I believe there were rumors around the time Amex lost Costco that Wells Fargo was thinking of acquiring them. Unsubstantiated and certainly not going to happen now with the PR crisis WF is going through, but an interesting M&A possibility.
Well, I've put in more than 10K's in CSR, way more than the minimum. CSR is the default card to use if there's no other specialty cards to use. I would say Chase has successfully differentiated themselves from others.
They could have literally had a bot run a better AMA
they should signup u/circlejerk_SS
Executives are generally out of touch with the reality of the situation. and then when numbers reflect negative changes everyone that had to try to make the best out of the situation gets fired.
I think people have this misconception of what churners are - there are a lot of people here who book meeting rooms, weddings, business events/conventions, and pay attention to what programs make the most sense. Churners aren't hurting their bottom line as much as we'd like to think. Lots are staying on free nights, and then probably redeeming stays with UR points, not stealing diamond upgrade spots from more deserving users because all of their stays are reward stays. World of Hyatt does nothing to deter this.
The high value customers are the ones staying at LHW, Aman, Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons, Relais & Chateaux, FHR hotels....and for the most part don't care for Hyatt. Ive stayed at a number of Park Hyatts and in above average rooms, and can't see much of why you would stay there at the same price point, with other luxury chains offering much better service, food, and amenities.
I wouldn't say that with a ton of confidence. We are definitely using three free nights at the Park Hyatt Sydney during their peak tourist season. We're also cashing in points at the Andaz Papaguayo. Nightly rates for the times of our stays range from $600 - $1,300 for both properties. We also got Diamond during the brief status match timeframe. I would venture a guess that we're not the only ones to do something like this.
All the park hyatt's have low availability for award nights, or recategorize rooms so that base level rooms are not always available. PHNY is difficult to book any sort of award nights nowadays, followed by PH Tokyo, ime. And it's not like the free food for breakfast is expensive - most often it's low food cost items in a buffet where the same amount of food is being made every day.
I could see the diamond welcome amenity is being scrapped because of status matchers though that was probably in place long before.
changes are great though if you do business in tokyo a lot
I think identity is a big problem for our community at large. As this niche blows up and goes more mainstream there seems to be a lot of conflation of terms. The term churning is becoming generic to anyone who keeps up with points and miles instead of just those who churn credit cards.
I usually pay for nights at SPG properties because I want the points for airline travel more than I want a free night. All I really want out of the hotel itself is status perks. Hyatt is doing its best to cut the perks down and devalue the customers who don't go all in with their brand. I'm much more interested in staying with a company that knows what I want for my normal travel and I'll hit up somewhere like a Peninsula if I want luxury.
EDIT: Paragraph break.
I don't think their target audience wants to be named an explorist or discoverist. Might be the worst tier names of all time!
Aww, come on... you don't think business travelers want to be like Dorist the Explorist??
*joke credit to u/6hMinutes
Thanks for the citation! Joke update: I've since been convinced that "Doris the Explorist" is slightly funnier (so I'm going to start using that when I get Explorist status next year).
Given the political trends, being labeled a "Globalist" doesn't seem so hot either.
I don't have much sympathy for him at all. Why the hell would you do an outreach/marketing event without ever researching your audience or your method of communication? Yeah we aren't his target audience but if I had to wager not many people on reddit are. Or at least they aren't all in one spot or would know to come running to a random AMA. If he wanted to reach his target audience he should have done a Q & A on flyertalk (do they allow that? I know they have a hilton rep there).
That's a good question for the VP of communication in charge of social media strategy. Oh wait.
Your phone call yielded a hundred times more info than his AMA.
I guess I'm the new unofficial VP of Global Marketing...
...too soon?
I think their strategy may make sense. The branding, only time will tell. The communication, terrible.
It's obvious that this program targets top level elites who stay at full service properties. Those are also expensive properties, so the customers will be high value.
But they seem reluctant to just say that.
Yeah, I guess I can understand why he wouldn't tell the general public directly that they're only targeting the people that make them the most money.
Which, if so, why not improve diamond or add another tier above?
Other than the current welcome amenity benefit Globalist looks better to me. Unlimited space available suite upgrades in particular is a great benefit.
Except you won't be getting many of those. You really think the same Hyatts that play games with award availability and "best room available" upgrades will suddenly play ball and give you your suite?
Have a link to the AMA?
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5dagui/hi_reddit_im_jeff_zidell_svp_of_loyalty_for_hyatt/
I don't think this was rough at all. The AMA started with genuine questions asking to clarify some of the changes. Only after ignoring a ton of questions and dishing out canned responses did the AMA get a bit rough because the people got quite a bit annoyed. The reason this AMA was rough in the end is all on Hyatt
While not all r/churning users are their target audience, Hyatt marketed this AMA to their customers via email as a chance to get more info on their product. As such, some of those 100+ night customers where attending this AMA with questions.
I know quite a few 100+ nights road warriors and most of them have at least 6 CCs on them at any given time (except for those poor souls with a forced company CC.) While not all of them are r/churning members, pretty much all of them are into maximizing their CC rewards with their reimbursed spend. So, sooner or later, a lot of them find their way to reddit and to churning.
For some reason, those answers just rub me the wrong way. I don't know if it is the sheer arrogance displayed (reddit peasants are not the target audience so they don't care, boohoo we were treated poorly by them) or something else...
Meh, I am getting too worked up over this. First quarter bookings need to be finalized soon. Haven't moved any away from Hyatt yet but they sure are testing my patience.
To your second point. My bullet points are paraphrases and synopses of our discussion points. His main point is that those 100+ night road warriors are their target market... whether they are members of r/churning or not. In a grander sense, "travel hackers" are not their target. One major criticism was the removal of the stay requirement for top tier status. That allowed people to be elite members with far fewer nights, using mattress runs.
Good intel, thanks for posting.
I can understand their desire to focus their rewards program on high-profit users. I'm just not convinced this is the best approach for a small chain. They nerfed casuals and most business travelers pretty hard. All the guys I know who are in 40+% travel positions (sales, client-facing roles, etc.) tend to lean Marriott/SPG for the footprint, and "minor" in Hyatt or another chain when available.
IMO Hyatt is suboptimal as the primary chain for anybody who travels a lot to different locations. And these changes actually make them less attractive as a secondary loyalty program for those travelers. Leaving just business travelers who go back and forth to the same locations a lot.
So...I don't get it. I'd love to see the internal data that lead them to this decision. shrug Maybe I'm missing something. Or maybe they are.
"It's a bold move cotton, let's see if it pays off."
You're not wrong. Most business travelers don't get to travel to the big cities for their trips and certainly wouldn't be allowed to stay at places as expensive as Park and Grand Hyatts.
With less than 700 properties worldwide they aren't the most attractive as a program of choice.
I too can understand why a high-end hotel company would want to appeal to its high-profit users. However, the reality is they market the hell out of their credit card to casuals. So the casuals like myself with the credit card are still going to accumulate a free level 3 or 4 room every 2-3 months while the high profit users who do not stay 50+ nights a year get free bottled water and if they stay in a handful of hotels up and down the chain a free room.
Man if only they said some of that at the AMA.
But still, making status harder to get doesn't reward loyal customers.
Yeah, once he started the corporate-speak ball rolling, he never really got out from under it.
r/churning certainly isn't, but unless people were lying, there were a lot of posts in the AMA from very frequent stayers.
The newness of some of the accounts indicates that people who received emails from Hyatt about the event joined in order to participate in the AMA. Not unreasonable, plus most of the concerns were echoed by pretty much everyone in the thread.
To me, this is the most important question. I don't think nearly anyone actually closes their loyalty accounts, and most people with a nontrivial number of points won't let them expire, so basically all they can do is get suspicious when people who stay 75 nights a year haven't shown up in a month. But calling them up and saying "Hey, why haven't you been on any business trips lately?" would likely be perceived as a huge invasion of privacy, so they're basically screwed by the time they can collect meaningful evidence that the most loyal customers have defected.
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I think his statement about how we're not his target market is hilarious. So many of those comments in that AMA were basically stating that they have some high value status with Hyatt or elsewhere. How is that not their target market? I spend 80-100 nights a year in a hotel, would I not be part of their target market? So ridiculous.
I feel like their target market is uninformed high spenders that aren't as attentive to reward changes like we are.
if that is indeed their market, it's a dying one, as millennials tend to be smarter about things like this, or stick to airbnb's, or have less access to expensed travel.
Given that redditt and especially this sub is full of well educated and very high earning people...I disagree.
Of course I haven't done any whining about the changes because I personally am NOT one of the people hyatt is after.
Anyyways,
I would've loved if you could have asked him this question:
"If you were to heavily cut costs to your loyalty program but wanted obfuscate the real effects of what was happening, how would it be different from WoH?"
Did you really email and then talk with the CEO of a hotel company about how their new loyalty program would turn off churners? Seriously?
Don't people understand that the number one rule of churning should be to stay under the radar? This is why we can't have nice things.
Nope. Emailed the CEO to discuss how poorly the new program was being communicated to their loyal customers. I was a 180+ night road warrior at one point and I closely track loyalty programs. After the AMA, I reached out to offer help, knowing how crucial the month of December will be for Hyatt's next year. Most business travelers start their plans for next year during December.