MARKET METRIX ANNOUNCES SECOND QUARTER 2004
HOSPITALITY INDEX RESULTS
-- Four Seasons, Jet Blue Airways and Enterprise Rent-A-Car
Take Top Industry Categories --- Novel Customer “Leakage” Measure Reveals Their Switching Habits -SAN RAFAEL , Calif. – Aug. 10, 2004 -- Market Metrix, LLC, the leading provider of
market research services for the hospitality industry, today announced results of the
Market Metrix Hospitality Index (MMHI) for the second quarter of 2004. Four Seasons,
Jet Blue Airways and Enterprise Rent-A-Car ranked number one in hotel, airline and
rental car industry customer satisfaction, respectively. Four Seasons returns as the top
rated hotel brand in the country after falling in the rankings for the two previous quarters.
Jet Blue and Enterprise have both won seven out of the last eight quarters in their
industry categories. First time winners include Executive Inn Hotels in the “Midscale
with Food & Beverage Services” category and AmericInn in the “Economy” category.
“Leakage” Traces Customers’ Tracks
Market Metrix developed the “brand leakage” concept to quantify and evaluate the brand
switching habits of hotel customers. The Company has integrated this important new
measure into its quarterly MMHI report, enabling subscribers to track customers’ travel
activity over time, i.e., if they remain loyal, switch to another brand, or try another brand
and then switch back.
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“Knowing to which brands customers actually switch can offer valuable insight into
keeping them from leaving in the first place,” said Jonathan Barsky, Ph.D., Market
Metrix co-founder and partner and University of San Francisco marketing professor.
For example, Best Western loses most of its defectors (9.2%) to Comfort Inn. Hilton
loses its biggest slice (10%) to Marriott and Hampton gives up 8.3% of its switchers to
Best Western hotels.
“Armed with this information, brands can create marketing strategies to re-capture lost
customers, promotions to woo back defectors, and products and services to specifically
address competitor offerings,” said Barsky. “Knowing the sequence of brand choices
that customers make can offer insight into where to build hotels, what brands to include
in a portfolio, and what business affiliations would exploit these travel patterns.”
MMHI Top-Hospitality Rankings Q2 2004
Hotel
Four Seasons Hotels
Airline
JetBlue Airways
Car Rental
Enterprise Rent-A-Car
Luxury Hotels
Four Seasons Hotels
Upper Upscale Hotels
Walt Disney World Resorts
Upscale
SpringHill Suites
Midscale w/ Food&Beverage Services
Executive Inn Hotels
Midscale w/out Food&Beverage Services
Drury Inns
Economy Hotels
AmericInn
Extended-Stay Hotels
Homewood Suites
Casino
Rio
Upscale Casino
Bellagio
Hotel Reservations Website – Hotel Brand
Residence Inn By Marriott
Hotel Reservations Website – Travel
Hotwire.com
About MMHI
The Market Metrix Hospitality Index is a quarterly report of customer satisfaction with
hotel, airline and car rental companies based on 35,000 in-depth consumer interviews.
The MMHI ranks top hospitality brands by industry and, for hotels, by categories such as
luxury, mid-price and economy. Detailed, in-depth and customized reports are available
for subscribers. No other customer satisfaction index offers MMHI's reporting frequency,
volume of customer interviews, cross-industry results or innovative satisfaction
measures.
The MMHI contains 135 hotel brands, 25 airlines and 11 car rental companies. The
wealth of data is presented in an easy-to-use format, enabling subscribers to quickly
identify trends and find best practices. Subscribers can measure their company's standalone performance and dynamically benchmark their ratings against those of self-selected
competitors. In addition to standard measures of customer satisfaction, MMHI has
pioneered several proprietary measures. Hospitality companies that provide Loyalty
Emotions -- select emotional experiences for customers, such as "pampered," "relaxed" or
"hip/cool," depending on category and niche -- obtain higher rates and can increase prices
with fewer defections. Loyalty Program Strength measures the relative success of a
company's loyalty program compared to other programs in the industry. The Secure
Customer measures a customer's intent to return and likelihood of recommending the
hospitality company, important indicators of satisfaction.