The second booking: Your own program needs no points. Some guests will pay to join it.
Two hotel loyalty programs worth an independent's attention don't depend on points, and both run on rules a single hotel can copy
by Markus Busch
Your hotel can run a loyalty program without a single point in it. A member rate in the booking engine, a box on the guest profile that says she is a member, and a rule for who gets the upgrade when a room is free. Points are the part an independent can least afford: every point a guest earns is part of a free night the hotel owes her later, on a date she picks. Two brands show how far that can go.
Both matter to an independent for a reason the shared programs can't match. With your own program, the answer to the question that decides everything, where the guest has to book to earn, is always the same. Your website.
1 Hotels dropped points and doubled its members
1 Hotels is a small luxury brand owned by Starwood Capital. In July 2025 it replaced its points program with what it calls Mission Membership. Members earn nothing to spend later. They get a member rate, and perks like an upgrade or a late check-out when the hotel has room for them, with priority going to the guests who stay most. When a member joins, the brand plants a tree, and 1% of what members spend goes to an environmental charity they choose.
By November 2025 the program had more than 200,000 members, more than double the July number, Skift reported. The brand hasn't said how many of them booked, or how often they came back.
Mission Membership carries nothing forward. The upgrade is given out of a room that is empty tonight, and the late check-out out of a housekeeping plan that has slack in it. If the hotel is full, the perk waits.
Accor's paying members stay 2.9 times as often
Accor went the other way and charged for it. ALL Accor+ is a paid subscription on top of Accor's free program, from €99 a year for an ibis card to $249 for the Explorer card sold in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Explorer members get two buy-one-get-one nights a year, 15% off stays and discounts on food and drink at Accor hotels. The card began in Australia as a way to fill Accor's restaurants, and still sells to people who live near the hotels.
More than 480,000 people pay for Explorer, Accor said in September. It says they stay 2.9 times as often as non-members, come back 74% more and spend 2.6 times as much, and that they have booked more than 3.5 million room nights. Those are Accor's figures about its own members, and guests who buy a card are likely the frequent ones to begin with.
What matters for an independent is the order of the money. The fee arrives before the stay. The free nights and discounts come out of rooms and restaurants the hotel runs anyway. And a guest who has paid for the card has a reason to book the next stay where it works.
The member rate is the sign-in
The simplest version needs no club at all: a member rate behind a sign-in on your own booking page. We have set out how the commission you already pay can fund it. The rate gives the guest a reason to book on your site, and the sign-in gives you what piece one of this series showed Booking.com keeps from you: her own email address, typed in by her, with the dates and the room she chose. In the European Economic Area and in Switzerland, no Booking.com contract can stop that rate from being lower than the one on Booking.com.
Every program in this piece starts there.
What a single hotel can copy
Each of these scales down to one property.
Recognition costs a guest profile and a team that reads it. A member rate on your site, the next room category when one is free, check-out at 2 p.m. when housekeeping allows, the table she had last time. The 1 Hotels rule works at any size: perks when the hotel has room, priority to whoever stays most. No points, so nothing owed.
A paid membership costs a decision about what the fee buys. The small version came from citizenM before Marriott bought it: one yearly fee, $120 at the time, for 15% off and a 2 p.m. check-out, on direct bookings only, which we have covered. Since the sale, the card also carries Marriott Bonvoy Gold status.
For a single hotel the menu is short: a year of member rates, an upgrade when available, one free night on a date you choose, a dinner credit. Price the free night at what the room costs you on a quiet Tuesday, which is housekeeping and laundry, against a fee the guest paid in January. A hotel with guests who come back two or three times a year has the material for it. So does a city hotel whose restaurant and spa already have local regulars, the people Accor's card was first sold to. A hotel whose guests come once in a lifetime does not.
Either one keeps the guest's details on your own system, where your front desk can see her coming.
Your Booking.com commission is the budget
Piece one of this series ended on a number: how many of your repeat guests came back through Booking.com in the past year, and the commission you paid on their stays.
Set the cost of your own program against it. The member rate, the upgrades given out of empty rooms, the late check-outs, the free night if you sell a membership. If the program costs less than the commission, the difference is yours, and so is the guest's next booking.
Read also: The second booking: Your regular can earn points at your hotel. The program decides where she books.
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