In an era when loyalty can feel like a math problem—spend X, earn Y—Sonesta is betting on something more human. The 85-year-old hotel company has been quietly rewiring its business around Sonesta Travel Pass, not just as a currency engine but as the connective tissue linking 13 brands and 1,100 hotels across segments. The north star: build emotional connections that outlast any single rate, redemption chart, or promo.

“Soon after Sonesta acquired the Red Lion brands, we’ve brought our web platforms together, we’ve brought our loyalty platforms together,” says Chris Trick, Chief Marketing & Performance Officer at Sonesta. “We unified the marketing funds, so now all of our marketing and media efforts point to the same place, with the same connected thread, which is our loyalty program, Sonesta Travel Pass.”

Since acquiring Red Lion Hotels in 2021, Sonesta has been operating with the urgency of a scale-up. That lens shows up in the loyalty math—and the mindset. Travel Pass has grown roughly 20% year over year, now at about 8 million total members, with sign-ups averaging ~100,000 per month. More telling than raw scale: engagement. “Thirty-two percent active,” Trick says, emphasizing that Sonesta tracks both “active” (any points-based activity in a period) and “engaged” (repeat activity). That’s a healthy rate in a category where many programs tout massive member files but shallow participation.

From transactions to ties

Trick is candid about the limits of points as a relationship strategy. “Loyalty has to extend beyond the transactional value of ‘you stay, you get points,’” he says. “Because then it’s just a currency play.” The answer, in Sonesta’s view, is to surround the stay with value that feels relevant before, during, and after a trip.

Think in three buckets as Trick describes them:

• Contextually relevant partners that travel demands anyway—Avis Budget, Shell—so members earn more for what they’d already do.
• On-property enhancers like ClassPass and kid-focused Yodo that improve the stay itself.
• Experiential partners that unlock the “why” behind a trip—concerts, sports, tours—and let members earn and, increasingly, feel.

On that last front, Trick connects the dots to how people actually travel in 2025: fluidly. Business trips stretch into long weekends; families build itineraries around festivals; and the “Taylor Swift effect” showed how a single tour can spike citywide occupancies and rates. Sonesta’s response is to weave experiences into its loyalty fabric so Travel Pass is present at the moment of inspiration, not just at check-in.

That’s where two new partnerships come in. As Trick puts it, “our relationships with Viator and TFL really play a strong role in that.” He elaborates: “TFL is a great ticketing platform that offers a lot of transparency and no hidden fees, and access to thousands and thousands of sports, concerts, and festivals. This allows us to create a platform and add value to our program, because members have the ability to earn points for those purchases.” Viator, he adds, brings “over 400,000 global tours… that can really serve to enhance that experience and allow members to earn points when purchasing through our platform.”

“We built our event access platform to be fast, flexible, and frictionless—with full transparency at every step,” says Adam Rossbach, President of TFL. “When members can access the best seats through a partner they trust, and earn rewards while doing it, that’s when utility becomes loyalty.”

For Travel Pass members, this reframes loyalty from a ledger to a lifestyle companion. For Sonesta, it creates new earning occasions that don’t depend on room nights—and it builds memory value. If a fan remembers that the best seats or the perfect local tour was easiest to find through the Sonesta ecosystem, points become the receipt for a feeling, not the point of the relationship.

Designing for moments (and momentum)

Sonesta isn’t just outsourcing “feelings” to partners. The company is co-creating them, often in intimate formats that money can’t easily buy. A standout: its collaboration with Rolling Stone (via PMC), where Sonesta hosts “Musicians on Musicians” events across its hotels—50 to 75 people in a room, a top-tier artist in conversation with an up-and-comer, then an acoustic set. These are exclusive, member-access experiences that translate beautifully to social—owned by Rolling Stone, amplified by Sonesta, and, crucially, remembered by guests.

Trick frames hotels as an “intimate industry,” which might sound odd in a business that lives and dies on occupancy. But that intimacy—someone leaving home to stay with you—creates an opening for trust. If loyalty is a relationship, intimacy is the context where it grows.

The macro calendar matters, too. Sonesta is positioning early for 2026 tentpoles like the U.S. Semiquincentennial and the FIFA Men’s World Cup, as well as culturally resonant Americana like the Route 66 anniversary—sweet spot opportunities for Sonesta’s economy brands (one is literally called Americas Best Value Inn). Expect packages that combine stays with access, perks, or local discovery—loyalty as trip-design, not just discount.

What the numbers are really saying

Programs with nine-figure membership totals can dazzle. Sonesta’s story is more grounded: fewer members than the mega-chains, but a higher proportion doing something that signals a relationship. If you care about lifetime value, that 32% active figure is a leading indicator—especially when paired with partnerships that move members from “signed up once” to “comes back because it’s useful.”

There’s also a distribution reality that Trick doesn’t shy away from: “We’re the 8th largest hotel company in the U.S., but it’s a huge gap between 8 and 1.” The solution isn’t to copy the category leaders feature-for-feature; it’s to pick lanes where Sonesta can be meaningfully different—experiences, city-by-city cultural moments, and a program architecture that rewards members for what inspires their travel, not just where they sleep.

The emotional moat

In loyalty, currency inflates. Emotional connections compound.

Sonesta’s approach builds compounding mechanisms into Travel Pass: relevance (the partner you already needed), delight (the experience you’ll talk about), and recognition (access that feels earned). When those line up, points become punctuation marks in a longer story—proof you belong to something that gets you.

That’s not just brand poetry. It’s strategy with resilience. In noisy markets, price transparency is a force of nature; emotional differentiation is the human counterweight. The brands that win are the ones that help you design the trip you wanted in the first place—and then give you a reason to do it again.

Trick sums it up simply: “We want to build value when members are on property. We want to build adjacent value. And that creates the relationship beyond the transactional value of the points.”

SOURCE: Forbes