Written by Matt Davies, Powerhouse Brands LLC

ContributorsTodd Tomlin, Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, Inc. | Leigh Ann Ambrose, Stored Value Systems, Inc.Brett Glass, Gift Card Impressions, Inc. | Michael Biscotti, Blackhawk Network, Inc.

TRAVEL IS THE NEXT SET OF MAJOR MERCHANTS BASED IN THE U.S. TO START LAUNCHING GIFT CARD PROGRAMS. RETAILERS AND RESTAURANT PROGRAMS HAVE BEGUN TO MATURE, BUT HOTELS AND AIRLINES ARE JUST STARTING TO FIND THE BENEFITS OF PROACTIVELY MANAGING THEIR GIFT CARD PROGRAMS TO BRING GUARANTEED FUTURE REVENUE, HIGHER TRAFFIC, AND LARGE LIFT PERCENTAGES.

HOTELS HAVE UNIQUE CHALLENGES IN THE MERCHANDISING AND MARKETING SPACE, HISTORICALLY FOCUSED ON CREATING A “HOME AWAY FROM HOME” ATMOSPHERE AND UNCLUTTERED FRONT DESKS. AS A CONSEQUENCE, B2B PROGRAMS HAVE BEEN A GREAT STARTING POINT FOR HOTELS TO BEGIN THEIR JOURNEY TO FIND A GIFT CARD PROGRAM THAT IS RIGHT FOR THEM.

Hyatt Hotels gift card program has historically focused on B2B opportuni-ties. “The size of our team has dictated that. We’ve gone after the sales in B2B as the opportunity was the most apparent. Now we’ve re-focused the program to also capture the gifting consumer to be in-line with other retail-ers who are doing well in the B2C market,” says Todd Tomlin, Hyatt Hotels.

This is apparent in Hyatt’s historical sales, broken out by percentage:

B2B — 85%ONLINE — 10%HOTEL SALES — 5% THIRD PARTY — HAVE NOT PARTICIPATED Based on a few significant things Hyatt knew about their B2B customer, they felt there was room to enhance and grow the consumer side of the business.

$175 AVERAGE LOAD50% OF B2B PURCHASE WAS FOR SELF-USEWhen Hyatt started reviewing their consumer offerings, their marketing portfolio for gift cards was similar to other hotel brands when they start out

• Zero hotel signage or merchandising

• A single branded design in all channels

• Online physical-only selection with a clunky interface

• No third party inclusion

• Most traffic was from B2B, which carries a high discount ratio

Todd makes the challenge he and his team faced clear, “We want to match our peers in the market place- we are targeting consumers purchasing gift cards from any merchant with a higher price point regardless of industry. The direct gifting consumer allows us to grow our program with a lower discount than B2B, and the more we sell to consumers for full face value- the more we can justify a heavier discount for B2B to balance the discount percentages.”

So they developed a four point plan to make the product more appealing and accessible:

Now we’ve re-focused the program to also capture the gifting consumer to be in-line with other retailers who are doing well in the B2C market

- Todd Tomlin, Hyatt Hotels.

PART 1DEVELOP A ROBUST ECOMMERCE PLATFORMHaving done the ecommerce development in-house, the Hyatt team acknowledged that the gift card platform did not have a lot of the flexibility that was available from outsourced solutions. “Our aim was to improve the func-tionality to allow consumers to purchase multi-ple card designs, receive branded email notifi-cations, branded e-gift cards, and to outsource and streamline the fulfillment process,” says Todd. “We’re a small team- having one point of contact to manage processing, card production, and digital technology made sense to us.”

Given that there were multiple offerings, they looked at a number of different solutions, and as SVS was their processor, they chose to go through SVS’s digital provider, an iteration of the Transaction Wireless ecommerce solution. “Hyatt decided to use a one stop partner from strategy, to processing, to card production, all the way through. I think they see that as a big advantage,” says Leigh Ann Ambrose, Stored Value Systems.

The integration, which went live in mid No-vember 2014, allowed a new e-gift card product, forty designs, and the ability to print physical cards on demand with Card Fulfillment Services (A Travel Tags Company).

“It’s early, but orders are skyrocketing, and it substantially increased our offerings for our consumers. Our previous platform had a lot of limitations, like the send and billing addresses had to be the same, and we only allowed physi-cal cards. After the first week, digital is outselling physical cards,” says Todd.

Leigh Ann from Stored Value says, “It allows their consumer a large variety of designs and fulfillment options, as well as fraud protection. They will be including marketing and promo-tions on their site to help grow their program.”

PART 2ENHANCED GIFT CARD DESIGNSHyatt, in looking at all of its channels, had a single card design in every sales chan-nel. The latest update was 2013, and the previous design update was over 5 years ago. “Best practices from others in the gift card space dictated that we were missing out on gifting occasions. We focused our new designs on that concept. We now have forty

different designs available online, all with gifting occasion or focused on the consum-er being able to “see themselves” in the scene. All our cards are photographs, cou-ples or families on vacation, skiing, golfing, spa, etc. focused on the various experiences when using the card,” says Todd.

While hotel locations will still feature the branded card, another initiative in 2015 is to utilize the most popular digital cards and produce them for in-hotel use. One interest-ing political solution was found as well. In-

dividual Hyatt brands or specific hotels were given the ability to print their own cards and include their cards in the online offering, giving them a reason to send consumers to the website to purchase.

The B2B channel will continue to feature the branded card indefinitely, as additional designs are not as important in the B2B space. However, the designs that end up being the most popular may naturally take the place of the current branded card.

WE NOW HAVE FORTY DIFFERENT DESIGNS AVAILABLE ONLINE, ALL WITH GIFTING OCCASION OR FOCUSED ON THE CONSUMER BEING ABLE TO “SEE THEMSELVES” IN THE SCENE. ALL OUR CARDS ARE PHOTOGRAPHS, COUPLES OR FAMILIES ON VACATION, SKIING, GOLFING, SPA, ETC. FOCUSED ON THE VARIOUS EXPERIENCES WHEN USING THE CARD.

PART 3 IN HOTEL MERCHANDISINGHotels have a long history of avoiding mar-keting clutter. “The intention of the hotel is that it is your home away from home, and there wouldn’t be marketing screaming at you. We’ve always battled that. Each brand manager is in charge of making a specific branded experience for their consumers. Gift card has not been a part of that historically,” says Todd, “Fortunately, we’re a floor above all the brand managers, and that’s where we started. We work with them all the time, and we went to every brand and presented the idea.”

Hyatt and others have taken the concept of “best practice sharing” from the Gift Card Network, trade associations, and other con-ference education forums to see what other people were doing. Hyatt then took this information a step further, and performed a robust competitive analysis, going to every hotel competitor and taking pictures of all marketing, not just gift card signage, and going to other high end brands to see how they marketed to their consumers.

“We presented that into the brand teams and made the case that most people doing it well have gift card displays. We were approved for a test for Hyatt Regency to put the in-ho-tel display,” Todd stated. The exercise even brought new brands into the program. Hyatt Place and Hyatt House brands had previ-ously opted out of the program, but these conversations brought about an opportunity to provide their own branded designs.

Hyatt Regency has the most robust impact, with a high-end paper shipper on the front desk during the majority of the holiday selling season. If successful, the displays will be replaced with a more permanent display substrate and changeable signage spots. The initial shippers will be provided by Gift Card Impressions, and since each Hyatt Regency has a different history, set of fixtures and colors, the challenge was to create a unified look that could fit within all of those doors.

“Our aim was to create a gift-able color block with the gift card as the hero. We then asked how we wrap this experience. We needed something upscale, representative of an amazing brand with a gateway to a lot of different experiences. We utilized silver and

other visuals that would cause consumers to have a hard time missing it. To make the product stand out further, we added a digital element that allows the consumer to create and share a digital photo book that consum-ers can create and send it in advance of the gift to let them know the gift is coming- to quickly grab and drop photos. It is a first to market hospitality consumer experience.” – Brett Glass, President and CEO,

Gift Card Impressions.

Hyatt gift cards will be marketed differently depending on which brand you go to. 100 Hyatt Regency locations will have the shipper on the front desk, while 250 Hyatt House and Hyatt Place proper-ties will have the cards available upon request, but will utilize its in-room marketing to feature the fact that gift cards are available.

PART 4INCREASING DISTRIBUTION THROUGH 3RD PARTY RETAILNot being in the third-party gift card channel was an-other major consumer-experience issue that Hyatt was looking to address. Hyatt recognized that third party was where a large number of consumers were looking to find gift cards, and had become a gift card destination. The brand recently signed a distribution contract with Blackhawk and will soon be launched in four thousand grocery and online locations.

“Prestigious travel and hospitality brands like Hyatt need their third-party gift card experience to be seamless, convenient and simple for consumers in order to be ef-fective,” says Michael Biscotti, Blackhawk Network, Vice

President of Business Development. “The Hyatt card is a great addition to our gift card mall as this brand brings a wonder-ful history of prestige and great value to consumers who shop for gift cards.”

The biggest delay in getting into third party was convincing the internal Hyatt team about the potential of the chan-nel, Todd states, “The issue was the perception of the brand in that

environment, but we talked through it with the teams using the information from other merchants about their gift card distribution, lift and incremental spend. Hotels can be seen as a commodity and having gift cards in gro-cery stores would shift competitive market share.”

While Hyatt is going into third party with a standardized card design and high hopes for the channel, cost was still an issue for the planning and budget approval process. “For the size of our program- third party is an extremely costly perspective- discount plus card production. This initial distribution is really a test to prove out the value, but we’re confident that entering the third-party space is what’s best for Hyatt and our loyal customers,” says Todd.

FINALTHOUGHTS FROM HYATTAs Hyatt continues to focus on a greater percentage of its business coming from direct consumer sales, Todd predicts, “the industry should expect more permanence to our tests, and next year, we’ll be looking at solutions for premium packaging, in-hotel displays, and other investments to improve the consumer experience, and focus our program to grow it in the coming year and beyond.”

Brett Glass from Gift Card Impressions says, “The Hyatt team has a good understanding of their consumer.

There were so many ways the consumer could use the gift card, and we worked on representing this upscale gift with a broad demographic. Their feedback waspointed and goal oriented to improving their brand and customer experience- they were terrific to work with.”

Leigh Ann Ambrose, from Stored Value Systems says it best, “It has been great to see such energy from their team, and their program has grown substantially, and will continue. The team is fantastic and a delight to work with. They have a lot of positive energy, and are very bright- they are opti-mizing the opportunity in every single chan-nel, is following best practices, and Todd is becoming a real leader within the industry.”

We needed something

upscale, representative of

an amazing brand with

a gateway to a lot of

different experiences.

–Brett Glass, President and CEO,

Gift Card Impressions.