Travel media Skift recently released an interesting hotel loyalty ranking. It is not ranked by the total number of members, but by a new dimension – "the number of members per room."
What does this mean?
To put it simply, it is to see how many members can stay in the hotel.
According to this algorithm, "Huazhu Club" defeated many international hotel groups and topped the list with 243 members per room. This number is almost twice that of Marriott Bonvoy (143 members per room), which has the second largest total number of members in the industry. Hilton ranks only 174th in this indicator, ranking fourth. Internationally renowned hotel groups such as Hyatt, InterContinental, and Wyndham ranked 6th, 8th, and 10th respectively.
In terms of the total number of members, Huazhu Club also topped the list with 288 million members.
If the total number of members is regarded as a reflection of the hotel's "influence", then the "number of members per room" is more like a "comprehensive index" – taking into account the differences in the size of the hotel group, a clearer understanding of the actual development of its loyalty program.
This means that Huazhu Club not only leads in membership scale, but also has amazing user loyalty.
This has been vividly confirmed in the hiking circle around me.
Recently, Huazhu has been very popular about the 318 Sichuan-Tibet Line. As a hiking enthusiast, many of my friends often take this line. After chatting, I discovered that many of them are members of Huazhu, and upon hearing the news, they all said, "I feel more at ease with Huazhu. It is 100 times more reliable than hotels and B&Bs!"
This kind of heartfelt recognition may be the best reflection of the high stickiness of Huazhu members.
global hospitality industry
Stuck in "Member Anxiety"
In recent years, the global hotel industry has fallen into a strange "member anxiety".
Major hotels have promoted their total number of members: Marriott 248 million, Hilton 226 million, Intercontinental 145 million… Although the numbers may seem eye-catching, people in the industry know that compared to the total number, the more long-term value is actually the activity of members.
Some members may have never opened the APP and do not remember registering, and their points balance has been zero for a long time.
After the impact of the epidemic, hotel groups accelerated store openings while shrinking their point policies.
Members found that the more points they accumulated, the more useless they became—from assets to “lottery tickets.”
The growth rate of loyal members simply cannot outpace the growth rate of stores.
What’s even more cruel is that traffic sovereignty in the hotel industry is being eroded bit by bit by OTAs.
Booking, Meituan, and Ctrip have user portals and price comparison algorithms, and their points applications are becoming more and more widespread, and they are attracting customers step by step.
As a result, members have become “puffy” digital assets.
From this perspective, the 243 guests in each room of Huazhu show the positive growth of loyalty members and scale development.
And behind it lies a "shuffle" of the global hotel industry by Chinese hotel brands.
From 0 to 288 million,
How does Huazhu do it?
More than ten years ago, the membership system of China's hotel industry was almost a wasteland.
At that time, membership cards had to be registered manually at the front desk, and points were only stored in the system and could not be seen or used.
In 2008, in an era when guests were troubled by cumbersome check-out and check-out procedures, Hanting broke precedent and implemented "zero-second check-out", allowing members to feel an unprecedented sense of pride.
In 2013, "points monetization", which is rare in the hotel industry, was realized and can be used as money.
In 2014, Huazhuhui App was launched, and the membership system changed from offline cards to an online ecosystem.
Over the past ten years, this system has grown from a simple accommodation discount to a complete "accommodation + transportation" life system:
You can use the app to upgrade room types, delay check-out, and send laundry with one click. You can also use points to redeem products, video memberships, coupons, performance tickets, and even connect with membership rights such as Juneyao Airlines and Didi Chuxing.
In the blink of an eye, in 2025, the number of Huazhu Club members exceeded 288 million, surpassing Marriott and Hilton to become the number one in the world.
But numbers are just results, what’s more important is logic.
In the eyes of traditional hotel groups, members are marketing accessories, the product of discounts and points. In Huazhu's model, members are traffic portals, repurchase engines, and ecological nodes.
Every click, every point, and every room upgrade strengthens the user's stickiness.
The proportion of direct bookings by members of Huazhu Club has reached 65.1%, which means that two out of every three guests have direct private traffic from Huazhu Club – this is a rare high proportion in the world.
Counterattack on OTA traffic sovereignty
To understand the rise of the Huazhu Club membership system, we have to start with a long-term business game.
In the past ten years, the biggest pain point in the global hotel industry is not building houses, but who controls the customer entrance.
OTA has mastered "search and price comparison", and the brand has lost its direct connection; members have mastered "repurchase and trust", but if it is interrupted by OTA, the brand will be speechless.
The path chosen by Huazhu is to build a closed loop of its own traffic from the beginning.
From the official website, APP, mini-programs, to points malls, co-branded credit cards, to social media and content-based planting, it is systematically "pulling users back into its arms."
what does that mean?
This means that Huazhu does not have to rely on OTAs to gain exposure, nor does it have to passively give away profits – members themselves are the most accurate and lowest-cost traffic entrance.
The capital market knows this best.
In the eyes of investment banks, members are not "users" but "assets": they represent cash flow certainty, repurchase rate and bargaining power.
If you have enough "active" members, you can negotiate better bank co-branded card rates and lower financing costs.
This is what gives Huazhu the confidence to surpass international giants.
At the consumer level, Huazhu’s loyalty system is also reshaping industry perception.
Others turn points into routines, Huazhu turns points into currency; others rely on shouting slogans to brainwash people, while Huazhu relies on experience to retain people.
This is the core logic of Huazhu to win the membership war: getting members is not a marketing tool, but the business model itself.
In an era when traffic is cut by platforms and trust is diluted by algorithms, Huazhu’s membership model makes “direct connections” more valuable again.
