Hotel Loyalty Race: Marriott Leads, Hilton Is Gaining Fast — See the Top 13 Programs

Marriott International has the global hotel sector's most dominant loyalty platform, with 228 million members. However, rivals are closing the gap in an industry that has seen a 69% surge in rewards membership in the past six years, according to industry data.

Skift's analysis of financial filings reveals that the world's major hotel loyalty programs have collectively added more than 500 million loyalty program members since the end of 2018, highlighting the industry's intensifying competition for repeat customers.

Hilton Honors has emerged as the fastest-growing major program, expanding its membership base by 147% to 210 million members. At current growth rates, Hilton could surpass Marriott Bonvoy's membership count by late 2026, though recent strategic partnerships have helped Marriott maintain its lead.

Hilton's loyalty program had the largest absolute growth, adding 125 million members. Marriott and IHG also had remarkable gains in absolute numbers. Hyatt, IHG, Sonesta, and others grew more quickly relative to their size.

Hotel Loyalty Program Growth, 2018 to 2024

Source: Financial filings, Skift reporting. *Asterisks: To estimate Accor's and Jin Jiang's December 2024 numbers, we used numbers reported within a few months of that time. For IHG's December 2018 numbers, we estimated a figure based on its public disclosures on the next-closest date; Radisson's program launched at the end of 2022.

Hilton to Overtake Marriott?

Based on their six-year compound annual growth rates, Hilton Honors could surpass Marriott Bonvoy's membership count in mid-to-late 2026 — with the milestone possibly disclosed in early 2027.

This assumes that both programs continue to grow at the same compound annual growth rate they enjoyed in the past six years without major changes in strategy or market conditions.

However, changes in acquisition strategy or market conditions could affect that forecast. In late 2023, we reported that Hilton was on track to overtake Marriott by the end of 2024 based on five-year compound growth rates.

That didn't happen.

One reason was that Marriott signed a licensing partnership with MGM Resorts, which encouraged many of the 40 million members of the MGM Rewards program to sign up for Marriott Bonvoy, too. That helped Marriott add roughly 28 million members last year.

Yet Marriott shouldn't be complacent. It can look to IHG as an example. IHG had the world's first hotel loyalty program. It also used to have the largest one, with 76 million members as of July 2013. Yet by September 2020, it had over 100 million members and had fallen behind Marriott and Hilton in member count.

Hyatt's and IHG's Fast Growth

While the biggest players continue to dominate, some smaller programs are growing even faster.

One fast-expanding program was Global Hotel Alliance's GHA Discovery, used by brands like Kempinski, Minor International's NH Hotels, and Highgate's Viceroy. Its membership quintupled to 29.5 million.

Yet, out of the publicly held hotel groups, Hyatt's program showed the highest percentage gain, roughly quintupling from its 2018 membership base.

That said, Hilton had the second-greatest proportional increase relative to its starting size in 2018.

Hyatt says it's fairer to compare hotel loyalty program performance by comparing the number of members per hotel. It recently said World of Hyatt had about 30% more members per hotel than its rivals among its Western public company rivals.

IHG instead prefers a members-per-room metric. Elie Maalouf, CEO of IHG, told Skift last month that the metric that "really matters is members per room."

"Some hotel companies have fewer rooms than we do. Some hotel companies have more rooms. So if you look at the proportion of members per room, IHG is right up there with everybody — and growing quickly."

When Skift compared the largest publicly held hotel groups, Hilton had the highest proportion of members to rooms. Hyatt came in second place, and IHG came third. Marriott didn't perform well using this metric. (Table below.)

Hotel Loyalty Programs, Compared by Members Per Room, at the End of 2024

*Footnote: Numbers as of December 31, 2024. Jin Jiang's member count is as of September 30, 2024, and its December room count is estimated.

Missing Information

The industry has added over 500 million new loyalty members between 2018 and 2024.

However, the loyalty programs don't distinguish between "active" members and anyone who has opened an account in their lifetime, making it difficult to measure program engagement.

The companies also don't consistently disclose the fees they charge owners for guests who redeem reward stays.

Marriott International says that Marriott Bonvoy has the lowest loyalty charge-out rates in the industry. That was plausible, but we couldn't independently verify that.

Sean O'Neill