InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is rebranding its Priority Club Rewards programme, with the offer of free Wi-Fi for all its members.
From July 2013, the hotel company will rebadge the loyalty programme as the ‘IHG Rewards Club’, introducing a range of new benefits for members. These include the offer of free Wi-Fi at any of the company’s 4,600 properties around the world. Initially this offer will only be available to Elite tier members, but it will be extended to cover all members from 2014.
“[IHG will] offer free internet in all hotels to all loyalty programme members, globally – whether they stay the night or come in for a coffee or an impromptu meeting,” the company said in a statement. Currently IHG offers free internet in all its Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels, whether or not guests are members of the loyalty programme, but the service is chargeable at other brands, such as InterContinental or Crowne Plaza.
IHG said the move to offer free Wi-Fi only to loyalty scheme members follows the results of a global survey which shows that nearly half of adults (43%) would not stay in a hotel that charged for internet. A further 23% of the IHG survey respondents said that free in-room Wi-Fi is the most important amenity when choosing a hotel for a business trip.
All of which makes the decision to offer free Wi-Fi only to loyalty scheme members an interesting one. Another recent study by Deloitte & Touche found that customers are increasingly choosing hotels based on factors other than their loyalty scheme. According to the Deloitte survey, value-for-money was the top factor influencing a hotel decision, while membership of a loyalty scheme was only the 20th out of 26.
Several other hotel companies, including Best Western and Shangri-La, now offer free Wi-Fi as standard, while other global chains are delivering the service at their more lifestyle-focused brands, such as Starwood’s Aloft, Hyatt’s Andaz or Carlson Rezidor’s Radisson Blu.
IHG’s Priority Club Rewards programme currently has 71 million members across the world.
