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, with "10 percent and growing" coming from mobile. Hilton's success with pushing loyalty and direct bookings isn't limited to Hilton alone. A recent  Kalibri Labs report demonstrated that hotel owners were big winners, and direct booking campaigns may have although the company is not conceding that. contributed to Expedia's rocky fourth quarter earnings although the company is not conceding that. The Importance of Loyalty For Nassetta, however, these efforts are not just about getting people to stop clicking around; direct bookings and loyalty are inextricably intertwined with another, and they have a direct impact on Hilton's ability to offer a superior guest experience. "We've been working very hard on strategies to have more direct relationships with cu