Josh Belkin, Hotels.com’s vice president and general manager for North America, says offering exclusive pricing to loyalty program members is a win for all parties involved.
Customers get better prices. Suppliers who agree to lower rates get hotel listings that stand out more thanks to a large purple banner designating their Secret Price, as Hotels.com has dubbed it. And Hotels.com sees loyal customers who come back more and more.
“It’s a virtuous cycle,” Belkin said. “They keep coming back because they like our loyalty program, they like working with us and they continue to see a lot of really good-quality hotels at great prices, and it just keeps reinforcing itself.”
Hotels.com first began heavily marketing its Secret Prices in May 2015, Belkin said. The prices, hidden from the public and search sites, can be accessed by becoming a member of Hotels.com’s loyalty program, which is free, signing up for its newsletter or using the company’s mobile app.
Secret Prices is part of a larger trend of members-only pricing from OTAs, which Belkin said started gaining traction 18 to 24 months ago.
Before then, OTAs offered discounted pricing in a variety of ways. For example, Hotels.com sent email-exclusive discounts for lodging, Belkin said.
Some other Expedia Inc. brands did the same, according to Daniel Reed, vice president of global merchandising. Reed’s team is responsible for the Expedia, Orbitz, Wotif, Travelocity and CheapTickets brands.
Members-only deals for Expedia loyalty members began with lodging in April 2015. Today, the OTA offers member-only deals on accommodations, car rentals and, most recently, activities. Reed said discounting started with mobile-exclusive deals, newsletter deals and in-app deals.
“We brought all of that together and found that offering something special to our members within Expedia, specifically value around pricing, was something that really resonated with our consumers as well as our suppliers,” Reed said of members-only deals.
