Carlson Marketing Worldwide will no longer issue points to the millions of users of its Gold Points Reward Network as of April 1.
The Gold Points Reward Network’s users come mostly through Carlson Hotels Worldwide or T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants. Both brands will revamp their loyalty programs to focus more on their particular industries. Carlson’s newly multilingual, multicurrency and multinational Goldpointsplus program offers travel and lodging rewards. When Friday’s completes its new program this year, rewards will be geared towards dining.
“We discovered with the reward network that most of the people, when they sign up through hotels, they’re looking for hotel redemption things,” said Barry Wegener, senior director of communications for Carlson. “So, by creating a program just for hotels, people earn points by staying there and then can redeem for better-quality hospitality things like airline miles and free night stays. It’s quicker because they earn more points, and it doesn’t cost any more to redeem them. By focusing on a particular industry, we can provide more value for their customers.
“We think it’s the way to go for these coalition programs,” Wegener concluded.
All members of Gold Points Reward Network will retain their current points, and those points can still be redeemed on the network’s Web site.
