Hilton CEO Believes Direct Booking Campaign Is Key to Improved Guest Experience

Hilton's investments in pushing direct bookings and loyalty memberships is working out, according to Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta. "This is something we will be talking about forever and it's a very comprehensive approach to having deeper and more frequent engagement with customers," Nassetta told  investors and analysts during Hilton's fourth quarter and fully year 2017 earnings call Wednesday. Hilton, like many of its peers, began heavily promoting direct bookings through campaigns such as "Stop Clicking Around" — its biggest ad campaign to date — in 2016 and has since steadily invested in encouraging consumers to book direct by incentivizing them to do so with discounted loyalty member rates. Nassetta said that in 2017 alone, Hilton added a record 11 million more Hilton Honors loyalty members for a total of 71 million, and that close to 95 percent of those members are booking direct. Direct bookings, he noted, account for approximately a third of all of Hilton's bookings,