This Luxury Hotel Group Wants to Charge You $200 to Join Its Loyalty Program – It Just Might Be Worth It – Fast Company

[Photo: Courtesy Ennismore]

Subscriptions are shaping up to be the new new thing in loyalty programs.

The idea was pioneered by coffee chains like Pret-a-Manger, Panera, and Au Bon Pain, which have boosted traffic to their stores by offering members free drinks for monthly fees. Sweetgreen jumped on the trend this spring by giving customers discounts on salads through its $10-a-month Sweetpass+ membership. And now, hotel group Ennismore is taking the model up a notch by applying it to stylish hotels. Among Ennismore’s 75 hotels and 150 restaurants are some of the hospitality’s most beloved and unique brands, The Hoxton, 21c Museum Hotels, SO/ Hotels, SLS, and Mama Shelter among them.

Unlike the most hotel loyalty programs, which are free to join and offer travelers greater rewards the more they stay (and spend on cobranded credit cards), Ennismore’s recently unveiled program, dubbed Dis-loyalty, asks members to pay $216 a year, or $18 a month. And then the value starts accruing. Members receive five simple benefits, with no blackout dates: 50% off stays at new hotels within in the first three months of opening; 20% off a first time stay in any Ennismore hotel; 10% off return stays; 10% off food and beverage at almost all Ennismore restaurants (a couple are still being negotiated); and one barista-made beverage at any of the company’s hotels and restaurants, even if you’re not a guest, every single day of the year.

“I’ve been fascinated for a long while by subscription models that also offer a community,” explains Ennismore founder and Co-CEO Sharan Pasricha. The hitch, however, was how he could create a program that lived outside the already robust one of Accor, the French hospitality giant that owns a controlling stake in Ennismore. “When we only had eight or 10 hotels, a loyalty program outside of Accor just wouldn’t work.”

But as his hotel group grew to encompass 10 different brands and dozens of properties, Pasricha saw a picture emerging. “We took a lot of time scratching our heads, thinking about how to bring folks to together, ” he says. “We came up with idea of a subscription model that rewards you for being disloyal, for trying new places.”

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