Following Minor Hotel Group and Pan Pacific Hotels Group becoming new shareholders at the end of last year, Global Hotel Alliance (“GHA”), the world’s largest alliance of independent hotel brands and operator of the award-winning, multi-brand loyalty programme, DISCOVERY, today revealed another strong performance in 2018, as it embarks on a year of activities to mark its 15th anniversary.
Overall like-for-like room-revenue produced by its DISCOVERY loyalty programme members increased by over 10% to US$1.6 billion, of which cross-brand revenue (i.e. revenue produced by members who enrolled at one brand and then stayed at another) grew 17% to reach US$108 million. In the best performing hotels, the DISCOVERY programme is now producing more than half of total room-nights sold and adding up to 8% in incremental occupancy from cross-brand customers.
The rise in revenues was driven largely by a further 21% growth in DISCOVERY membership, which reached 13.6 million members by the end of 2018. Six million of those members reside in North America, but there was strong growth in Asia (now 2.3 million members), Europe (2.2 million) and more stellar growth in Australasia (1.3 million).
Another strong year of growth, reinforced by new shareholders and a rapidly-growing shared customer base of nearly 14 million members