Starwood Focuses on Customer Loyalty, Mobile Insights with SPG Keyless 2.0

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide recently rolled out its SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) Keyless 2.0, touted as the industry’s first truly mobile and keyless entry system that allows guests to use their smartphones as keys for their hotel rooms. Starwood officials hope that customer insights gained from SPG Keyless 2.0 can be leveraged to promote and foster customer loyalty and brand advocacy.

The update to SPG Keyless will enable multiple guests sharing the same room to take advantage of keyless entry. All they need is an SPG account and the SPG app. Over the next few months, SPG is also expanding mobile check-in capabilities on the SPG app.

“After releasing SPG Keyless, we quickly saw guests wants to utilize the technology to breeze through hotel lobbies,” Alyssa Waxenberg, Vice President of Mobile Strategy, Starwood Hotels, told Loyalty360. “We are making this option available for more guests by introducing SPG Keyless service is now being introduced at select Le Méridien, Westin, Sheraton, and Four Points properties worldwide. These distinct lifestyle brands join the Aloft, Element and W properties already providing access to SPG Keyless. With more hotels offering Keyless, we’ll have greater insight into mobile activity across our brands and regions. We hope to use this information to continue improving the service through coming iterations. We also ask guests for feedback on their Keyless experience through the app. We use this to improve the product and share feedback with the hotels.”

SPG Keyless is currently available at over 160 properties worldwide in over 30 countries.

“Customer feedback around Keyless has been enlightening and promising,” Waxenberg added. “Already, over 350,000 members have registered, with SPG Platinum members being the most frequent users of the keyless solution, which provides a streamlined check-in process custom-made for their hyper-mobile travel needs. Since launch, we are seeing more demand from hotels asking to convert to Keyless and also keeping Keyless in mind with new builds and renovations. We also heard more people wanted multi-key check-in and faster, more reliable performance. We addressed all of the above in our latest iteration, by introducing the service to more hotels, adding multi-key check-in and improving app performance. As more people are going mobile with hotel bookings, services like Keyless are allowing them to use the SPG app in more helpful ways. The SPG app has already been successful, and Keyless allowed a deeper level of service.”

Customer experience means everything to Starwood, Waxenberg noted. 

“That means we are constantly striving for new ways to surprise and delight, utilize new technology, and solve for traveler pain points,” she explained. “The rollout of upgrades to Keyless is a perfect example of us continually evolving to meet customer needs. Our members are at the center of everything we do at SPG, and delivering stellar customer experience is the core of this philosophy.”

Starwood uses a mix of metrics to measure customer satisfaction/customer experience.

“We use a mix of quantitative data around SPG app usage, survey feedback, App Store comments, and customer experience sessions to see what works and what our guests really want,” Waxenberg said. “We use this information to determine what will strengthen guest experience and, consequently, increase SPG loyalty.” 

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