Gamifying Loyalty to Deepen Customer Relationships for a Leading Hospitality Brand

Our client, one of the largest hospitality brands with thousands of hotels around the world, boasted a membership program of more than 100 million customers. To foster even deeper loyalty among its guests, it wanted to test whether implementing a more gamified approach would drive program engagement among high-value, high-spend members compared to competitive rewards programs.

The company partnered with Material to integrate behavioral science frameworks with gamification principles to redefine its loyalty program and deepen its customer relationships.

WHAT WE DID

Consumer Insights

Behavioral Science Consulting

Loyalty

Experience Design

Approach

Exploring diverse member segments (highly engaged, less engaged and non-members) in North America, Europe and Asia, the brand leveraged Material’s proprietary BASE-IC and Implicit Identity Mapping (IIM) frameworks to uncover the unique fundamental human needs and motivations driving each segment’s attitudes toward loyalty and gamification.

From this phase, the brand discovered an opportunity to incorporate game mechanics into the loyalty program that appeal to highly engaged members’ desire for exploration and challenge, as well as non-members’ desire for a sense of belonging and connection.

The brand then delivered three high-potential approaches for connecting brand experiences with loyalty rewards, including developing a branded mobile game to keep less engaged members connected by converting in-game achievements into real-world micro-rewards. This was part of a strategic roadmap for implementation, which emphasized continuous iteration and alignment with the brand’s long-term growth objectives.

Outcomes

Our partnership established an enterprise-wide loyalty framework that enabled the brand’s global teams to develop strategies responsive to their local audiences, supporting long-term business goals and reflecting a mindset geared toward sustainable growth.

The brand decided to expand its scope from the original two markets to include two additional key markets, directly influencing wider global business objectives. The brand is looking to build on the success by embedding select gamification elements from the loyalty program into its lifecycle marketing plan with a tailored approach for different priority customer segments.

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