What is TL Loyalty program
Loyalty program is an effective marketing strategy for guests rewarding and encouraging, which helps to stick the guests to your hotel brand.
Loyalty program is profitable both for hoteliers and guests. Guests get discounts or benefits staying at your hotel. The guest will remember that he has a discount for the accommodation in your property, and choose your hotel over your competitors. So, a loyalty program is an effective tool to increase revenue for your business.
How it works in TL Booking engine
A loyalty card with a unique number is issued to the guest, where his accumulations are stored. Accumulation amount depends on the amount spent by the guest or on the number of nights. Accumulations are accrued to the card in 5 days after guest's check-out date at 00:00 local property time. After a certain amount of money or nights are accumulated for staying in the hotel, a guest loyalty level is upgraded automatically. He may use this discount when staying in the hotel for the next time.
TL Loyalty program is included in the cost of TL Booking engine and is automatically enabled for all hotels using TL Booking Engine.
Set up Loyalty program
Make 4 steps to start Loyalty program in TravelLine:
1. Types of earnings and card type selection;
2. Loyalty levels set up;
3. Loyalty cards issued to the guests;
4. Loyalty program activation on the booking engine.
In your TravelLine account, go to “Guest management” > “Loyalty program” and click “Connect” button.
Loyalty program connection wizard will be opened:
Select types of earnings and cards
1. Select earning types and a card type, and add a link to the loyalty program description on the official hotel website.
Two types of earnings are available:
Money in the hotel currency — the discount will be increased depending on the amount of money spent by the guest for staying in the hotel. Please note that extra and transfer services are not taken into account.
Nights — discount depends on the number of booked nights. The more nights a guest spends at the hotel, the greater discount he will get.
Card type:
Physical — means printing the card number on a plastic card. Select this type if the loyalty program is already launched in your hotel, your guests have such cards, or you are planning to issue them.
Virtual card is just a set of numbers, issuing a plastic card is not required.
You may use both card types at the same time.
2. If you use TL WebPMS, the Level settings wizard will help you to determine the limit for the next level upgrading.
Loyalty levels are created by default. You may add a new level or delete the existing one if needed.
Specify the number of guests for every loyalty level. Depending on the percentage of guests the wizard will determine the threshold for upgrading to the next loyalty level automatically. You may correct the counted value on the next step if needed.
3. Enter the loyalty level names, discount percentage, and money amount for the next level upgrading.
After that, discounts will be created automatically in the menu “Room management” > “Discounts”, so that the guest could get the discount according to their loyalty level.
4. On the settings step, you may activate automatic card issuing and set up notifications.
5. On the “Card issuing method” you may issue the cards to the guests using their accumulations or import issued cards from the file.
6. After Loyalty program activation, the guests get the discount according to their loyalty level on the booking engine.
In the “Loyalty program on the official website” block, add a link to the description of the loyalty program on your website. This link will be contained in the emails which deliver automatically after the guest loyalty level is changed, as well as in the guest account on the hotel website.
Once the settings are saved, the status of the loyalty program will be changed to “Activated”.
Set loyalty levels
Go to the “Loyalty levels” tab:
The basic level is created by default for all the guests without taking into account the number of nights booked or money spent by the quest.
If you use TL WebPMS, Level settings wizard will help you to set the discounts and loyalty levels correctly. Pay attention to the “Statistics” block. Beside the “Level settings wizard” button, this block also contains the chart “Breakdown of guests by loyalty level”.
The chart helps you to choose the loyalty levels so that they match the number of guests you need to allocate. Vertical axis is the number of guests, Horizontal axis is the selected type of earnings set by you (amount of money in the hotel currency or number of nights). You may change the scale to make it convenient for you.
Let's consider an example:
69 guests accumulated 10 000 euro;
3 guests - 13 000 euro;
3 guests - 16 000 euro.
To launch the wizard, click on the “Level settings wizard” button. You may launch it several times until the parameters suit you.
In the window opened, specify the number of guests for every loyalty level. Number of guests for the basic level can automatically change depending on the number of levels and number of guests on other levels. You may also add new loyalty levels if needed. The level names can be changed on the next wizard step.
Depending on the percentage of guests on every loyalty level, the wizard will determine the threshold for upgrading to the next loyalty level automatically — number of nights or money spent by the guest. You may change this setting manually on your own.
Set discounts
Set discounts which guests get on different loyalty levels:
Click “Save” button at the top of the page. Discount and earnings amount for every following loyalty level should be higher than the previous level. If the settings are incorrect, you will get a warning:
Check the results of the settings made
Once the settings are completed, you will see the chart with the distribution of guests by loyalty levels according to your settings.
The statistics are based on the TravelLine data collected for the last 5 years.
Loyalty program enabling
Once the settings are made, enable Loyalty program in the booking engine:
1. Go to “Guests management” > “Loyalty program”.
2. Turn on the switcher to the green at the top of the page:
If you do not use the loyalty program on your website yet, send a request to your support manager, and we will reach out to you. To start using TL Loyalty program, you need to have TL Booking engine as well as one of three PMS: TL WebPMS, Fidelio or Edelweiss.