JD Power May Be Smart About Lots of Things, But Hotel Loyalty Ain’t One

I ignored the new hotel loyalty satisfaction survey from JD Power & Associates when it came out last week, but it seems to be getting a lot of play now, so let’s go over why it does not tell you anything useful. This isn’t simply one of those “these things are subjective” or “it depends on whom you ask” kinds of criticisms. The survey is just fundamentally silly. That begins with the factors that go into their ranking: account maintenance/management (23%) ease of redeeming points/miles (22%) ease of earning points/miles (18%) reward program terms (16%) variety of benefits (16%) customer service (5%) The most heavily-weighted factor in the rankings — nearly a quarter of it — was ‘account maintenance’. That just doesn’t strike me as the single biggest factor in how valuable a hotel loyalty…

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