Marriott Bonvoy has just reached an impressive milestone, which puts into perspective just how big this loyalty program is, and what an incredible marketing tool these programs can be.
In this post:
World’s largest hotel loyalty program now has 200 million members
Marriott Bonvoy is already the world’s largest travel loyalty program, and has just passed yet another impressive milestone, as it now has 200 million members. Wow, that’s a lot of members, and a huge pool of people to market to!
I do find the story around this “celebration” quite funny, though. Marriott has identified one specific member as being the 200 millionth person to enroll. This was someone named Nino, who signed up for the program at the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai.
The hotel celebrated this with a cake and a champagne toast. Not only that, but Marriott’s SVP of Loyalty and Marriott’s Chief Sales & Marketing Officer happened to be at the hotel as well. What a coincidence. 😉 Joking aside, I can of course understand the challenging logistics here, and wanting to at least celebrate someone.
In addition to the celebration, Marriott rewarded Nino with 200,000 Bonvoy points plus two free night awards.
How does this compare to other loyalty programs?
Admittedly bigger isn’t always better, but how does the membership of Marriott Bonvoy compare to that of other hotel and airline loyalty programs? Well, Bonvoy is the biggest travel loyalty program in the world, but that might not be the case for long.
Skift had an interesting story in late 2023 about the growth rates of various hotel loyalty programs:
- Hilton Honors has roughly 173 million members
- IHG One Rewards has roughly 100 million members
- World of Hyatt has roughly 42 million members
What’s interesting is the difference in growth rates between programs. Over the past five years, Hilton Honors and World of Hyatt have seen a roughly 110% growth rate, while Marriott Bonvoy has seen a roughly 60% growth rate. So Hilton Honors may very well overtake Marriott Bonvoy as the largest loyalty program in the near future, if that trend continues.
For those curious about airline loyalty program membership, American AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, and United MileagePlus, are all believed to have somewhere in the range of 100 million to 120 million members. Those programs continue to grow at a fast pace, given the incentives that these airlines provide for signing up (Delta offers free Wi-Fi to SkyMiles members, American offers earlier boarding for AAdvantage members, etc.).
What’s interesting is how big the drop off is after that, as the next airline loyalty program doesn’t even have half as many members. For example, take Emirates Skywards, with Emirates being a globally known airline. Emirates only has around 30 million people enrolled in its program.
Bottom line
Marriott Bonvoy is celebrating that it now has over 200 million members, which is an impressive milestone. Marriott Bonvoy is the largest travel loyalty program in the world, with Hilton Honors being a close second. Given the difference in growth rates, Hilton Honors may very well become the biggest program soon.
What do you make of Marriott Bonvoy’s impressive milestone?
The new Taylor Swift contest looks likely to grow it higher.
Anyone else thinking "Nino" is the Nephew of one of the Marketing SVPs? Lmao
I wonder how many of those are active. I guess a percentage of people don't really use it but got the free wifi etc for being a member when they stayed some time ago.
This is full of s***.
I was helping Theodore Clubber-Lang registering online a few millisecond before this "Nino" without a last name. This guy is am imposter.
What about Accor? The early mentioned French mega program. How many members do they have?
And 150 million of them are platinum and above elite members now thanks to credit cards.
Only means more devaluation coming down the pipeline.
I have been a Marriott Bonvoy member for many years, and although living in Europe does not give you many opportunities to earn points as in the US, once you get any elite status it becomes quite generous. Compared to Hilton Honors (which I recently closed, after 10 years of being a member, because it got worse and worse) I am quite satisfied. Points have actually value here, pile up quite quickly and have been...
I have been a Marriott Bonvoy member for many years, and although living in Europe does not give you many opportunities to earn points as in the US, once you get any elite status it becomes quite generous. Compared to Hilton Honors (which I recently closed, after 10 years of being a member, because it got worse and worse) I am quite satisfied. Points have actually value here, pile up quite quickly and have been easy to redeem so far. I am genuinely surprised that the number of members is so huge.
Hmm, they had decoration in place, a cake prepared and everyone had their cameras ready? Of all the places they knew 200million sign up was going to happen at "this" hotel? Common! They think people are stupid.
I work for the Bonvoy logistics team. We had to send over 100 cakes around the globe along with many, many VP lookalikes to intercept the 200 millionth signup
I haven’t looked into this, but I’m guessing they also picked a guy with a large social media presence that can promote this on his end. Whenever companies do stuff like this, the person with the milestone is never a 90 year old with no social media accounts.
Now do 'active members' with stays or at least points activity in the past 18 or 24 months (everyone defines active differently).
This is just '200 million entries in the CRM'. That's a big database, but tells us very little other than Marriott Honored Guest began a long time ago and they added the SPG database and kudos to them for continuing to build the member file.
What's actually meaningful is conversions, to what extent...
Now do 'active members' with stays or at least points activity in the past 18 or 24 months (everyone defines active differently).
This is just '200 million entries in the CRM'. That's a big database, but tells us very little other than Marriott Honored Guest began a long time ago and they added the SPG database and kudos to them for continuing to build the member file.
What's actually meaningful is conversions, to what extent are members filling rooms and what's the uptake on their cobrand.
The Marriott Marquis frequent stay program predated Honored Guest by three years.
If only the benefits promised to top tier members were consistent and delivered consistently within brands.
Hilarious!! The SVP, champagne and cake all just appeared and this wasn’t coordinated with local authorities and Nino just happened to walk in and join Bonvoy! Sure :)