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Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

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IHG Rewards Club adds even loftier elite tier

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has added a new elite membership tier called 'Spire Elite' to its IHG Rewards Club frequent guest loyalty programme, aiming to recognise and reward the programme's most loyal and most valuable customers.

With immediate effect, IHG Rewards Club will reward its most loyal members with more relevant benefits, following extensive research into what programme members want from the programme. The study identified the importance of recognition to members who want to feel rewarded for their loyalty, and the introduction of Spire Elite places recognition at the heart of the relationship IHG has with its most valued guests.

Spire Elite membership can be reached by earning 75,000 qualifying reward points or staying at an IHG hotel for 75 qualifying nights, over the course of a calendar year. Including the ability to earn 100% extra bonus points on qualifying stays, Spire Elite members will also be able to choose between receiving 25,000 points, or upgrading a friend or family member to Platinum.

The qualification requirements for all IHG Rewards Club membership levels have also been restructured to make it easier for members to be rewarded for their loyalty. From July 2015, members will need to earn only 10,000 qualifying points or stay for 10 qualifying nights to be eligible for Gold membership. Gold members will need to earn 40,000 qualifying points or stay for 40 qualifying nights to reach Platinum membership.

The company's research into members' preferences revealed that the key ways in which they want hospitality brands to show them recognition include:

Providing the chance to feel part of a special club
Identifying a guest as someone unique, who is "not just a number"
Remembering something about the individual; their likes, dislikes and preferences
Providing a reward, a "thank you" for achieving something

As part of the launch of Spire Elite, IHG Rewards Club has also relaunched its Rewarding Experiences digital hub to showcase the experiences available to IHG Rewards Club members all over the world and across all four IHG Rewards Club membership tiers.

The name 'Spire' - apart from conjuring up images of lofty heights and impressive architecture - was actually derived from the old English word 'spir' - a shoot or a stalk of grass standing out amongst the others. According to IHG the name is intended to convey a sense of dedication and an aspirational attitude: going above and beyond. The name was also chosen for its connotations of prestige, elevated stature, and worthiness of admiration - which is how IHG Rewards Club says it views members who qualify for the new tier.

IHG Rewards Club currently claims nearly 86 million members worldwide.

Sources: InterContinental Hotels Group IHG / The Marketing Factbook.
Copyright © 2015 - 2025 The Marketing Factbook.

Categorised as:

Customer Experience
Customer Loyalty
Marketing Know-How

Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

Learn the insider's tricks and techniques to turn every customers into a 'super spreader' for your brand. It's better than free advertising. Once you start this ball rolling, your brand can grow rapidly through word-of-mouth, advocacy, influencers, and customer loyalty. Super-charge your company's marketing strategy, build up your market share, and make more sales through repeat business and customer loyalty.

Find out what works - and what doesn't - and who's succeeded, and how they did it. See how the world's top brands keep their competitive edge against all odds.

The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook walks you step-by-step through the techniques, metrics, reporting, analysis, marketing models, technologies, tools and innovations for successful marketing strategies - both traditional and emerging - with expert guidance from thought leaders in every major market. Find out the best ways to gather, analyse, and act on customer data to increase profitability, build your brand, empower your customers, beat the competition, reduce churn, and increase customer profitability. This is a marketing book you simply can't afford to be without.

This book aims to hand you all the facts, figures and research data you need for the best decisions for a more profitable, more engaging marketing strategy. It also highlights all the facts, forecasts and trends identified by our experts from the global Marketing Factbook's vast database of market data, news, studies, research and articles, and presents you with an invaluable library of ideas and practical support you can call upon at will.

With The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook at your side, you'll have instant access to a true goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, research and market data, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid, profitable marketing strategy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)