IHG Embraces Gowalla, Not Foursquare, For Newest Loyalty Promotion

May 19, 2010 at 12:25 PM | by juliana | Comments (2)

We have to admit, we were surprised today when USA Today reported that Intercontinental Hotels has eschewed the popular Foursquare location-based service in favor of a similar mobile check-in app, Gowalla.

Gowalla may not be as "trendy" as Foursquare is right now and while it lacks a certain angel investor by the name of Ashton Kutcher, it does have the backing and support of Kevin Rose, who founded Digg.com and Jason Calacanis, who founded Weblogs, Inc.

Even though Gowalla works pretty much the same way as Foursquare does and despite it being a "critical darling" (it won the best mobile app award at South By Southwest Interactive back in March), Foursquare has the bigger name. Foursquare also has more users--about one million to Gowalla's estimated 200,000.

So while we are still curious as to why IHG picked Gowalla over Foursquare--based on users alone, Foursquare would have been the better choice--we probably wouldn't care so much if the IHG "incentive" for Gowalla users wasn't so useless.

Here's how it works: You walk into an IHG hotel this summer and then check-in on Gowalla. By doing so, you will be alerted to the hotel group's "Hit It Big" loyalty program promotion. Yeah, that's it.

You will receive a note and it will tell you to register for the promo and what you could get. And that is, if you stay two weekends at an IHG hotel from now through August 31, you will get either Double Priority Club loyalty points or double air miles or up to $500 in prepaid gift cards at various national retailers. But remember, you need to complete two weekend stays at an IHG hotel first.

So what do you get for checking in on Gowalla? Essentially, NOTHING except a note.

Excuse us for being so cynical but if a hotel guest is savvy enough to use Gowalla and use it to check-in to an IHG hotel, then they deserve more than a note about a loyalty program promotion. How about a free drink at the bar? Or even 10 percent off a future stay?

With so many hotels offering tangible incentives on Foursquare, this partnership with Gowalla, while forward-thinking, is a bust. But we'll try and keep the faith that IHG will roll out better Gowalla incentives in the future. Sigh, it seems like we're doing a lot of "keeping the faith" these days.

What do you think about IHG's partnership with Gowalla--Bonus or Bust? Let us know in comments below.

Comments (2)

Return to » IHG Embraces Gowalla, Not Foursquare, For Newest Loyalty Promotion

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/14/foursquare-gowalla-location-war/

Jury seems to be out on which of the two leading location-sharing services is winning, but in any case it is awfully early to declare a winner in such a new space. (By the same argument, Webcrawler would rule the world, not Google).

Anyway, the point of the effort is to test a new, emerging channel, not to create a long-term alliance or make a statement about one publisher vs. another.

Beeing originally from Germany I did not know Foursquare before my trip. However we were on a trip on the german ship Aida where the crew members told us: Mit Foursquare können sie viele interessante applicationen nutzen und auch ihre erlebnisse über die clubschiff aida kreuzfahrten bequem mit anderen leuten aus ihrem umfeld teilen. Nutzen sie Foursquare und haben sie mehr spass auf der kreuzfahrt. They also told us about the Gowalla app which I found pretty useful.

Since I'm currently in the US I will test this app out and see what I can do with it.

HotelChatter

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