Are both iconic hotel brands headed for a broader strategic partnership?
Sudipta Dev – Mumbai
March 2017 will see the official launch of ‘Warmer Welcomes’ programme, a first of its kind loyalty alliance between Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces and Shangri-La Hotels. With this, the six million loyalty programme members of both brands will be able to stay at 200 hotels in 27 countries and 131 destinations. In an exclusive interaction with Express TravelWorld, Chinmai Sharma, CRO, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces said, “For a loyalty member it is almost like Taj has become 200 hotels from 100 hotels. Prospective members will find more reason to come into the programme because of joint portfolio strength.” As both the iconic brands have similar culture and service philosophy the alliance has started with loyalty integration, Sharma revealed that in the future it could be a larger brand alliance, where they can cross sell each other – through their website or call centre. “In the long run we could have sales people of respective brands sell a larger portfolio. These are some possible areas where we could do better economies of scale,” mentioned Sharma.
The hotel brands have mutually exclusive footprint, with only three cities where both have some presence. Warmer Welcomes will integrate Taj InnerCircle and Shangri-La’s Golden Circle guest loyalty programmes. “From a loyalty members’ perspective the value addition is huge because now not only will they get recognised across 200 hotels but they will be able to earn and burn their points whichever way they want,” mentioned Sharma, adding that a significant segment are corporate travellers. “A trend we have noticed among corporate travellers is that they stay at city destinations for business and go to leisure destinations with family. Our loyal members can now redeem their points and stay for free at a lot of destinations, or earn currency and choose to put it in their Taj bank or Shangri-La bank. The programme and the currencies are transferrable,” he mentioned. Wee Kee Ng, VP of loyalty, Shangri-La Hotels, affirmed, “This industry-first hospitality alliance bridges two iconic Asian brands who share similar brand values and service philosophies but have minimal overlap of properties. By partnering together, we are effectively doubling our footprints and will provide our guests and loyalty members more value, more destination choices and experiences and more reasons to stay with us.”
The benefit for members will obviously be more from outbound travel perspective. “Both the brands have significant number of properties in India and China markets, but nearly half of Shangri-La’s hotels are outside China and we have 16 international destinations,” said Sharma, pointing out that they will be watching the travel patterns closely, particularly as India and China are forecasted to have the largest outbound market for travel.