Best Western France get over 155,000 customer plays with 90% completions as they gamify customer loyalty
Success Stories
Best Western Hotels & Resorts is an American franchise licensing around 4,700 hotels split across 19 different brands, ranging from economy to luxury. Their locations are in more than 100 countries, and they’re the fifth largest hotel chain in the world.
Their Best Western Rewards programme was awarded the #2 spot on Newsweek’s “List of America’s Best Loyalty Programmes 2023,” and has been ranked as a top loyalty programme by WalletHub for 6 consecutive years.
The Best Western Rewards Programme is a major driver of customer experience and satisfaction on a global scale. It constantly adapts to new customer expectations and new consumption patterns. The benefits for members are numerous. This is what makes it a powerful loyalty programme today.
Virginie Barboux, Deputy General Director of Communication, Digital & Customer Experience
The challenges
🎯 Despite already being a recognised and celebrated player in the customer loyalty game, Best Western were looking for new ways to improve engagement with customers through their rewards programme.
Staying somewhere is to live somewhere – it’s a more nuanced and vital service than visiting a cafe or a cinema – it’s a unique area of commerce where essentials meet luxury. As such, a hotel’s rewards programme needs to reflect this to be competitive.
Their key objectives were:
- Add an engaging and playful layer of engagement to Best Western Rewards
- Encourage new sign-ups
- Boost downloads of their branded apps
A long-term approach to gamified loyalty
Gamification works best when you do it frequently and over time, as for every user action, you get data, so you can assess the kinds of rewards and game mechanisms your audience responds to. Best Western France really committed to this idea when they started incorporating gamification into Best Western Rewards.
📱 Games and gamification experiences “by Drimify”
They’ve used Drimify throughout the year, varying the game mechanics from campaign to campaign, and using them to promote branded app downloads and member signups, as well as enriching the experience of loyalty programme members.
In addition to utilising the Product Recommendation Quiz to help customers plan holidays anchored by their resorts and hotels, they’ve used a range of the instant win games as mechanisms to reward qualified customers with vouchers, free stays, and refunded stays, promoting long-term loyalty to Best Western brands.
Gamification, optimised across campaigns
Applying everything they’d learned, and retooling the best performing game mechanics, they went big at the end of the year, customising an Advent Calendar – which allows you to release a new branded experience every day for sustained user engagement (just like the ones where you got a chocolate every day until Christmas, but with marketing games). It received 122,201 views, and delivered 105,796 plays for an 87% engagement rate.
Results and KPIs
Key figures throughout the year 🚀
- 140,709 completed experiences for a 90% completion rate
- 155,482 plays from engaged customers
- Multiple 77%-plus engagement rates across different experiences
- 87% engagement rate for their Christmas campaign showing upward trending numbers through repeated gamification (when you gamify long-term, you learn more about what works for your audience)
Objectives achieved 😎
- Thousands of customers engaged and rewarded promoting long-term loyalty
- Significant increase in downloads of Best Western’s branded apps
Want to know more?
Your ideal Drimify plan
Your Drimify plan
Drimify is the no-code gamification platform for engagement and loyalty. Whether as a standalone solution or integrated effortlessly into existing systems, access a rich catalogue of customisable gamification experiences ready to plug-and-play, along with exclusive features like the Dynamic Path™ and the Combo™ for more immersive user journeys. Supercharge engagement across your operations and drive business growth.
The Strategy Pack
Enhance your approach to audience engagement with expertly crafted strategies. Our DrimTeam of gamification experts collaborate with you to plan and seamlessly supercharge your project, optimising every touchpoint across the user experience. Let us help amplify your success with our proven tactics and innovative digital experiences.
The Assistance Pack
We work together, setting up the experience with you (or for you), providing expert guidance and technical integration assistance, refining and optimising your gamification experience right through final validation to project completion. Ideal for those looking to save time, gain peace of mind, or learn how to get the most from the platform.
