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SMOKING OR NON-SMOKING. King size or two double beds. Room service or a leisurely breakfast in the café.

Everyone has preferences when traveling, and the InterContinental Hotels Group is using highly personalized statements to cater to guests' needs and build relationships long after checkout. Quarterly statements are mailed to active names in the 27 million-member Priority Club, started in 1983 as a loyalty program associated with the Holiday Inn brand, says Ken Bott, director of global consumer marketing.

“At the time, it was the first hotel loyalty program in the market, [created] because of the growth of [frequent flier] programs and our need to try to market to our most valuable recent customers,” notes Bott.

The London-based company's brands include InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites. “We don't expire memberships or remove people from the database based on inactivity,” Bott says. Members who haven't stayed at a company property recently may still be mailed to or contacted from time to time, he added.

Member points don't expire, and the club's roster of partners includes more than 40 airlines. InterContinental has some 3,600 hotels around the world in over 100 countries. New club features include “Hotel Anywhere,” which allows members to earn points that can be redeemed for a prepaid lodging card valid at just about any property, and a personal shopper that helps members redeem points for merchandise not listed in the rewards catalog.

Sign-ups for the club are encouraged in a traditional point-of-sale fashion at check-in, where guests are informed they could be earning points toward merchandise or free stays instantly if they join, says Bott. Memberships also are solicited online and through direct communications sent via partners like credit card vendors. General advertising is used, mostly within the context of the business and leisure frequent travel community.

The club has three main levels of membership — platinum, gold and standard — as well as levels specific to the InterContinental Hotel brand's Ambassador program.

Most members still get quarterly paper statements, which are printed in about nine different languages. The statements are the company's main communications vehicle with club members. The current format — created with the help of InterContinental's agency Digitas and production vendor IWCO Direct — was instituted around 2002, based on a need to get customized messaging to customers in a “nice-looking package” reflecting the quality of the audience, Bott says. The level of customization and personalization depends heavily on how much data a member has offered to InterContinental.

With customization, volume is probably the biggest hurdle InterContinental faces, thanks to the sheer quantity of statements multiplied by the number of versions in different languages. “With dynamic messaging, it becomes a version-control nightmare, because we need to have the right information [in front] of the right customer at the right time,” Bott says. “IWCO helps with that.”

“We've created an online electronic proofing system that allows both Digitas and us to look at [the statement] simultaneously and feed it to [InterContinental's] people in Atlanta,” says Jeff Jurick, IWCO Direct's executive vice president for sales. “We have a team of people who have taken on that responsibility to maintain quality.”

The statements' main components really don't vary from country to country, Bott says. There are different formats for different regions, largely because the loyalty market in the United States is more mature and savvy, driven by earning points.

However, members in Europe or the Middle East are looking for greater value in the form of redemption opportunities. In the Asia-Pacific region, there's more of a “recognition aspect,” says Bott. There, the statements feature more pictures and talk about attributes like room upgrades.

In statements sent this past January, for example, the version for U.S. members devoted a full page to updates about ways to earn points with partners such as J.P. Morgan Chase, T-Mobile, USA Today and Office Max. Offers for bonus points for stays at properties like Holiday Inn's Nickelodeon Family Suites and San Diego-Bayside also were featured. On the corresponding page of the same quarter's statement for Dutch members, announcements touting new properties in the United Kingdom and travel offers to Spain were highlighted.

The statement program's return on investment is judged by the revenue derived from the customers receiving the messaging, as well as more qualitative feedback from focus groups and the service center to determine whether people are engaged with the content, Bott says.

Readership surveys are done regularly in the United States, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Australia, Africa and Middle East regions. “We get their feedback and then modify their formats,” Bott says. “[We try to find out if statement recipients are] getting this stuff at the right time, if it's relevant to them, and if they're reading it.”

Overall, he adds, the program is growing year after year, and InterContinental is happy with the incremental lift.

For the future, Bott says InterContinental intends not only to take advantage of newer platforms like blogs and RSS feeds, but to follow the trend of letting customers have more control of the communication process.

“You need to let them raise their hands, so to speak, and give more of their preferences to you up front so you can meet their needs. What it comes down to is allowing customers to tell us what they want,” says Bott. “I think that's what we've been able to do for the last several years.”