Online booking makes hotel loyalty harder to keep
By Amy Zipkin, New York Times
For the past six months, Erin Gifford, a marketing director based in Washington, has traveled for business at least once a month, mostly to Boston.
But she has yet to see a single reward from a hotel chain.
“I’m not big into loyalty programs,” said Gifford, who works at Cove.is, a work space provider. Instead, she books hotels on Priceline about two weeks ahead. She typically picks an area that is a 15-minute walk from her meetings and pays about $100 a night with taxes. She has never stayed at the same hotel twice.
In the end, she said her hodgepodge approach, made possible by online booking, offered greater flexibility and savings than loyalty to a single chain.
