Everyone wants you to join their loyalty program these days. From the local coffee shop to the supermarket and what’s clinking in your wallet, loyalty is all the rage.
It makes sense too — loyalty is proven to drive more spend and engagement from customers than those without loyalty — and programs benefit from the greater data of these known members, allowing them to better tailor offers and experiences. On the other end, we as members hope for perks and discounts in exchange.
With hotels the loyalty hook has been really predictable and kind of even boring: stay with us all the time and we’ll maybe treat you a bit better and maybe sort out a free night every once in a while, if you spend enough.
Few people realize that hotel loyalty is also complicated by the fact that most big brands don’t actually own the hotels you stay in, and the owners of the actual hotel properties themselves aren’t as keen on handing out free breakfast as you’d hope.
Enter: Dis-Loyalty
Out of nowhere, Ennismore, the hospitality group behind many of the most stunning hotel brands like Hoxton, Mondrian, SLS, Mama Shelter, 25 Hour Hotels and SO/ decided to call time on that.
Instead, the company offers you the dance of Dis-loyalty. You pay them a monthly or annual fee (under $220 for a year!) and you instantly get wins. It’s kind of like the fancy member club “house” concept, but oh-so-much cheaper. You pay a fee, you get perks.
Traditional hotel loyalty involved compromises, and in a nutshell, it seems like the move with Dis-loyalty is to eliminate them.
Don’t bother picking the hotel in the wrong part of town just to stay loyal and maybe get some rewards later on — you can have rewards today, no nights needed, all for a small fee. This is like a public version of a house club with more locations and in some cases, better discounts.
Let’s break down the day-one perks for all Dis-loyalty members…
- 50% off all newly opened hotels
- 20% of your first stay at any of their 75+ hotels
- 10% of all future stays at any of their 75+ hotels
- free barista made beverage 365 days a year in any Dis-Loyalty hotel
- access to “drops” with exclusive offers and travel opportunities
A brag worthy recent example of dis-loyalty done right was the opening of the jaw-dropping SO/ Maldives. At prices typically hovering around $1000 per night, Dis-Loyalty members are still able to instantly save $500 per night, just for joining.
DIs-Loyalty: Members Club Without The Major Fees And Faff?
As I took in the scene at the Hoxton Shoredtich, perched upon a rooftop enjoying my daily free coffee, I couldn’t help but marvel that I actually prefer this locale to many of the “house” members club setups nearby. For one, I could get a table!
Sure, my free flat white lead to me then utilizing my 10% restaurant discount to cover the many more food and beverage purchases I made, that day, but the way I see it, we still both win? Dis-loyalty, and I.
One of the many perks of paying the $216 (£144) annual fee to join Dis-loyalty is indeed the free coffee or tea that brought me here, and it’s available 365 days a year at any of the 75 Dis-loyalty affiliated hotels or 150 affiliated restaurants.
I value a flat white at approximately £3.30 (about $5) these days, so if I were to max this out, yeah the math works. If you happened to live near a fun Hoxton hotel or other Ennismore hotel brand, you could very easily make all your money back on that alone, but that’s not the brilliance of dis-loyalty.
The brilliance, if you ask me, is that from day one, you can win and they do too.
It’s not a never ending journey in hopes of winning something, or just anything. Day one, you can take 50% off newly or somewhat recently opened hotels within the group. The savings leaderboard above does a great example of putting the annual cost into perspective.
Combined, this is easily arguable as a lot more valuable from day one than a slow trickle of points which may eventually save you some money, maybe. After all, points are a gamified version of a rebate, whereas this is an actual up-front savings.
In the membership “house” comparison, it’s a fraction of an annual fee for static discounts at many more hotels globally with free coffee on top.
Most hotels rebate you between 4-8% of the stay in the form of points, but using them is nowhere near as simple as just getting 10-50% off upfront and having to learn the way points work.
Going further, the no black-out dates or any of the typical caveats with traditional loyalty programs is refreshing. The long-tail discounts apply during peak summer too, and aren’t just trying to help during the lowest times.
Here’s a list of recent Ennismore hotel additions where it’d be incredibly easy to more than win-back your annual fee in a single transaction.
- The Hoxton, Vienna opened April 1 with 50% off stays through June 30, 2024
- Hyde Ibiza opens April 28 with 50% off stays through June 30, 2024
- Mondrian Ibiza opens April 28 with 50% off stays through June 30, 2024
- Mama Shelter Nice opens June 13 with 50% off stays through September 12, 2024
- 25hours Hotel Copenhagen Paper Island opens July 29 with 50% off stays through October 28, 2024
Seems To Generous? Think Again, I Think
When you start playing the inside baseball games of making this Dis-loyalty make economic sense for the brand, they actually do. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks about that? I’m totally cool just focusing on how much I can save too!
Anyway, hotels spend ungodly amounts of money on marketing in their first year to gain traction and relevance in a market. It’s not easy to just open a hotel and fill it.
In a way, Dis-loyalty is simply reinvesting that typcially spent marketing money into loyalty, creating prices and experiences which drive instant engagement and bookings to the hotel via the most preferred (direct) channels, all while creating daily calls to action to think about other hotels within the Ennismore stable.
Members naturally want to know where they can get the most bang for their “loyalty” buck, so hotels become instantly relevant to a group of people. It’s a lot better than a soft-launch and hoping to be featured on the White Lotus someday.
And let’s be honest — guests are addicted to discounts. As people start to dive in, the discounts actually drive loyalty as people seek to “win” their Dis-loyalty memberships.
Bottom line: it’s hard not to extract value from this membership, even if you only stay once a year. I’ll make thousands from mine this year and I’m not sure Dis-loyalty cares in the slightest. Maybe that’s the whole point? We both win.
You can check out Dis-loyalty here and do your own math.
Does Dis-loyalty stack with Chase Sapphire Reserve’s Ennismore perks(i.e. 4th night off, free breakfast, etc)