Dis-loyalty: Hotel Perks And Discounts With “No” Loyalty Or Points

It makes sense too — loyalty is proven to drive more spend and engagement from customers than those without loyalty — and programs benefit from the greater data of these known members, allowing them to better tailor offers and experiences. On the other end, we as members hope for perks and discounts in exchange.

With hotels the loyalty hook has been really predictable and kind of even boring: stay with us all the time and we’ll maybe treat you a bit better and maybe sort out a free night every once in a while, if you spend enough.

Few people realize that hotel loyalty is also complicated by the fact that most big brands don’t actually own the hotels you stay in, and the owners of the actual hotel properties themselves aren’t as keen on handing out free breakfast as you’d hope.

Enter: Dis-Loyalty

Out of nowhere, Ennismore, the hospitality group behind many of the most stunning hotel brands like Hoxton, Mondrian, SLS, Mama Shelter, 25 Hour Hotels and SO/ decided to call time on that this recently past year of 2024, RIP.

Instead, the company offers you the dance of Dis-loyalty. You pay them a monthly or annual fee (under $220 for a year!) and you instantly get very serious wins. I saved $2,300 on a single hotel stay and I then did that a few times. It’s kind of like the fancy member club “house” concept, but only the savings are fancy and the fees are oh-so-much cheaper. You pay a fee, you get perks.

Traditional hotel loyalty involved compromises, and in a nutshell, it seems like the move with Dis-loyalty is to eliminate those compromises and exercises in trust. There’s no trust needed. You pay a fee, then you get to book the prices behind the velvet rope that no one else does.

Don’t bother picking the hotel in the wrong part of town just to stay loyal and maybe get some rewards later on — you can have rewards today, no historical “loyal” guest nights needed, all for a small fee. This is like a public version of a house club with more locations and in some cases, better discounts.

Let’s break down the day-one perks for all Dis-loyalty members…

• 50% off all newly opened hotels

• 20% of your first stay at any of their 75+ hotels

• 10% of all future stays at any of their 75+ hotels

• free barista made beverage 365 days a year in any Dis-Loyalty hotel

• access to “drops” with exclusive offers and travel opportunities

A brag worthy recent example of dis-loyalty done right was the opening of the jaw-dropping SO/ Maldives. At prices typically hovering around $1250 per night, Dis-Loyalty members were still able to instantly save $750 per night, just for joining. I’m told someone booked a $2,000 a night room under the Dis-loyalty discount for $1000, for a 20 night stay, saving $20,000 on a circa $200 membership.

During December, over 45 hotels globally, including the newly opened SLS Playa Mujeres All-Inclusive, were 50% off, through August 2025 – with flexible cancellation too. I booked the new Hoxton Florence, the Mondrian Mexico and SO/ Vienna and of course the SLS Playa Mujeres.

The opening teaser rate was around $750 per night for a top room for our family of four and I saved over $375 a night for a savings of over $2300 in the week. That property is still available at 50% off, so if you’re looking for all-inclusive OOO, that’s pretty good to go.

DIs-Loyalty: A Club Without The Fees And Faff

I tested my free daily barista coffee at the Hoxton Shoredtich, a lovely hotel with a very local neighborhood woven feel. Feeling happy and cool on a rooftop, I couldn’t help but marvel that I actually prefer this locale to many of the “house” members club setups nearby. For one, I could get a table.

Sure, my free flat white lead to me then utilizing my 10% restaurant discount to cover the many more food and beverage purchases I made, that day, but the way I see it, we still both win? And for January 2025, there’s actually a 20% discount for all F&B at a ton of restaurants and bars globally. That “drop” just came in today.

I value a flat white at approximately £3.30 (about $5) these days, so if I were to max this out, yeah the math works. If you happened to live near a fun Hoxton hotel or other Ennismore hotel brand, you could very easily make all your money back on that alone, but that’s not really what I find the most fun about this disruptor program.

The brilliance, if you ask me, is that from day one, you can win and they do too.

Drop Culture

A thing I love with the new Dis-loyalty app, is drop culture. I am a sneaker/fashion/culture creature and we’ve been conditioned for drops. Limited edition, time sensitive opportunities. Dis-loyalty is doing this, dropping special discounts and offers all the time. Sometimes it’s quick fire contests to win $500 at a clothing brand. I’ve seen things.

It’s not a never ending journey in hopes of winning something, or just anything. Day one, you can take 50% off newly or somewhat recently opened hotels within the group. The savings leaderboard above does a great example of putting the annual cost into perspective.

Combined, this is easily arguable as a lot more valuable from day one than a slow trickle of points from a big program which may eventually save you some money, maybe. After all, points are a gamified version of a cash rebate, whereas this is an actual up-front savings.

Most hotels rebate you between 4-8% of the stay in the form of points, but using them is nowhere near as simple as just getting 10-50% off upfront and having to learn the way points work.

In the membership “house” comparison, it’s a fraction of an annual fee for static discounts at many more local centric hotels which have member house feels globally, with free coffee on top.

Going further, the no black-out dates or any of the typical caveats with traditional loyalty programs is refreshing. The long-tail discounts apply during peak summer too, and aren’t just trying to help during the lowest times.

Seems To Generous? Think Again, I Think

When you start playing the inside baseball games of making this Dis-loyalty make economic sense for the brand, they actually do. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks about that? I’m totally cool just focusing on how much I can save too. You do you, if you wanna click away.

Anyway, hotels spend ungodly amounts of money on marketing in their first year to gain traction and relevance in a market. It’s not easy to just open a hotel and fill it, even for a cool brand. There’s a whole song and dance to it.

In a way, Dis-loyalty is simply reinvesting that typcially spent marketing money into pre-funded “Dis-loyalty”, creating prices and experiences which drive instant engagement and bookings to the hotel via the most highly preferred (direct) channels, all while creating daily calls to action to think about the hotels within the Ennismore stable.

Members naturally want to know where they can get the most bang for their “Dis-loyalty” buck, they’ve paid for a membership after all, so the hotels become instantly relevant to a growing group of people. It’s a lot better than a soft-launch and hoping to be featured on the White Lotus TV show someday. Four Seasons kinda has that locked anyway.

And let’s be honest — we’re all addicted to discounts. As people (like me) start to dive in, the discounts actually drive loyalty as we seek to “win” their Dis-loyalty memberships. If we both win, so be it.

Bottom line: it’s hard not to extract value from this membership, even if you only stay once a year at a place where you can save more than $200. I’ll make thousands from mine this year and I’m not sure Dis-loyalty cares in the slightest. Maybe that’s the whole point? We both win.

by Gilbert Ott