Some 85% of business transient travelers to Hilton properties work for small- and medium-sized businesses. But Hilton didn’t have a program to recognize and reward those guests — until now.
The company debuted its Hilton for Business program earlier this year, after announcing plans to launch it in October. The offering includes loyalty benefits, portfolio-wide discounts, streamlined onboarding and program management for small- and medium-sized businesses specifically. What’s more, corporate travelers using the platform can earn Hilton Honors points for their companies and their personal accounts at the same time.
As business travel drives lodging demand growth this year, Hotel Dive spoke with Christiane Cabot Bini, Hilton’s vice president of global business travel sales, about how the company is courting its business travelers from small- and medium-sized enterprises.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
HOTEL DIVE: You first announced plans for Hilton for Business in October, then launched the program early this year. How has the response been?
CHRISTIANE CABOT BINI: Really great. We'd been working on a beta version for a while with a cohort of small business owners helping us to inform the tool. Then, when we announced our intent to launch the program in early 2024, we had this great waitlist of people that were eager to become part of the program. It's been a warm reception thus far, and I think we're just starting to gain momentum as the year goes on.
Business travel has changed a lot since the pandemic. Why was 2024 the year to launch Hilton for Business?
During the pandemic, there was a group of travelers who continued to travel all throughout, and that was small business travelers. That’s really when we started to work on a program. What you're seeing launch now is the result of a yearslong effort to build a program designed expressly for the small business owner.
When a corporate traveler showed up, they'd be part of a corporate program that we’d negotiated at a global level, and we had the mechanisms to recognize and reward them. But a small business [traveler] might show up looking like a leisure traveler to us.
Christiane Cabot Bini
vice president of global business travel sales, Hilton
It's really about recognizing the small business travelers when they show up, but we hadn’t always done that. When a corporate traveler showed up, they'd be part of a corporate program that we’d negotiated at a global level, and we had the mechanisms to recognize and reward them. But a small business [traveler] might show up looking like a leisure traveler to us. There wasn't really a mechanism for us to recognize and reward them in the same way.
Now, we have something that is not only about saving them money, but rewarding loyalty, and then maximizing those rewards through tools and programmatic features that help them keep on top of overall spend much more efficiently. For small business owners, time is money, and if we can give them the tools that make running their business easier, then that's a win-win.
How did you choose which businesses to pilot Hilton for Business, and how did you adjust the program based on their feedback?
In addition to being responsible for Hilton for Business, my other job is looking after our business travel sales. We'd had a number of business owners that really wanted to work with us, and we just didn't have a good program for them. So we reached out to a subset of them, and as we started to build out the tool, they gave us really interesting insights.
Some of it was around the core capabilities, like the ability to have a dashboard where they could log in and see how much money their company was spending, and where people were staying and traveling. And users’ ability to switch back and forth in their Hilton for Business profile between personal travel and business travel — that's something that came out of conversations with business owners.
How is working with small- and medium-sized businesses different from travelers with big corporations?
First and foremost, they comprise the bulk of our business travelers. They are on the road and traveling because they have to. Their business is their baby, and they're traveling to keep the business moving forward.
For small business owners, time is money, and if we can give them the tools that make running their business easier, then that's a win-win.
Christiane Cabot Bini
vice president of global business travel sales, Hilton
They’re also looking for the ability to have more of a self-service set of tools, and to be recognized and rewarded for the business that they bring us.
Does Hilton conceive of loyalty differently when it comes to business travelers as compared to leisure travelers?
More and more, B2C and B2B are kind of the same thing. It doesn't really matter if you're a small business or a big business — we all have an expectation that the services and the benefits that we get in a consumer environment translate to a B2B environment.
Our 2024 trends report revealed that personalization is really important, and a lot of that comes to life through our Hilton Honors app. There are all kinds of features and functionality that make traveling so much more meaningful, and certainly less stressful, but also more comfortable and welcoming, and that's really what we're going for. We really want the customer’s stay experience to be a very enjoyable one. For example, in-app messaging, which is available at most of our hotels, and I think all of our hotels by the end of the year — I use that one regularly as a business traveler, and now when I stay for leisure I do, too. If my flight’s delayed, the ability to message with the on-property team to say I'm running late — do you know how much stress that relieves in just one exchange? A five-second exchange takes the weight of the world off your shoulders.
