Hotels.com is seeing good traction with its Welcome Rewards loyalty scheme which was rolled out in Asia a year ago. Globally, the programme has six million members.

Johan Svanstrom (right), vice president and managing director for Asia Pacific, said it was seeing "great pick-up in all markets, particularly Japan, Korea and also Australia".

"People love their loyalty programmes in Asia, no doubt."

One reason it works, he said, it because it is "super simple".

You book and stay 10 nights and get 1 free night. "No unique and 'many-zeros' points calculations, no tiers to remember, no blackout dates ever. Ie everything that the typical hotel chain programme (and many others) is not – they're rather complex and have many restrictions."

Currently, Welcome Rewards works on over 65,000 properties worldwide and soon, it will be available at 85,000 shortly.

Svanstrom said a key reason why Hotels.com launched Welcome Rewards was to defend against disintermediation over time by players such as Google or other competitors in the value chain.

"We want to get a bigger share of wallet among the notoriously 'let's-shop-around' users who book travel online and it also helps lower marketing cost – a member who's on his/her way to 10 nights is more likely to type in Hotels.com directly meaning, we avoid paying a marketing click with someone else like Google or TripAdvisor or an affiliate).

Full story:

www.webintravel.com//blog/keep-it-simple-and-loyalty-works-plus-it-defends-against-disintermediation_3416