Tsogo Sun is devaluing its customer loyalty programme from October with a whopping 50%, making it much harder for customers to reach either of its two tiered levels through points and therefore much more difficult to enjoy any of the promised benefits.
The Tsogo Sun Hotels Rewards programme is the latest South African loyalty programme and latest hotel group to make it much more difficult for guests to actually earn enough points through spend to get access to any of the benefits.
The loyalty devaluation ironically comes during the 50th anniversary celebration of Tsogo Sun. People who stay at any of its hotels who will now have to spend 50% more in any calendar year to reach or remain on either the "platinum" or the top "black" tier after they sign up and automatically is placed on the "gold" level.
For a member of the programme to reach the mid-tiered platinum level, Tsogo Sun is making it 50% harder to reach or to maintain, increasing the threshold from 2 000 to 3 000 points needed per year. The same happens to the black-level that is jumping from 6 000 to 9 000 points needed - another 50% increase.
Tsogo Sun Hotels Rewards members get different percentage discounts on meals and stays depending on their tier-level and earn a different percentage of points based on their status levels.
"While there have been a few changes made to the programme, not all of them have been removals," said Camilla Zuccarelli, Tsogo Sun's marketing manager for the leisure division, in response to a media enquiry.
"For example, our rewards members all get uncapped WiFi for 5 devices as opposed to 2GB, which was the case before the amendments were launched."
Neo Mboniswa, Tsogo Sun communications manager, in response to a media enquiry said that "the hotel and gaming divisions of the business were split this year, which required us to review some of our offerings".
"This was in addition to the programme having remained the same for the past 5 years, which meant that it required an update. The amendments included a review of the tier thresholds as well as the revision of our benefits."
Neo Mboniswa said that "In order to ensure that we didn’t regrade members without offering them an opportunity to meet the new tier levels, we ensured that there was a 3 month grace period for guests – especially those who were concerned about the timing of the new tier-changes and the possibility of the tier-structure affecting their status.
Tsogo Sun was repeatedly asked if it can please respond to specific questions but didn't provide answers.
These questions included who decided to devalue the Tsogo Sun Rewards programme and why this was done in Tsogo Sun's 50th anniversary year.
Tsogo Sun was also asked what factored into the drastic decisions to make it 50% harder to reach either the platinum or black level in the programme, and if there were too many members who had reached tiers and made use of some of the discounts and benefits offered.
