Why Loyalty Starts at the Top of the Funnel

For years, hotels have treated loyalty and guest acquisition as two separate universes. Guest acquisition lives in the world of marketing spend, PPC budgets, and OTA commissions. Loyalty lives somewhere down the line, in the world of points, perks, and tier ladders.

But here’s the problem. By the time a guest checks in, you’ve already lost half the battle. You’ve already paid to acquire them. You’ve already ceded margin to an OTA. You’ve already fought through the noise of the marketplace. And then, after all that, you hand them a plastic card and tell them to wait eighteen months to see any value.

That’s not loyalty. That’s lunacy.

At Laasie, we believe loyalty doesn’t start after the booking. It starts before it. Loyalty is not a downstream perk; it’s an upstream engine. It is, in fact, the smartest way to power your top of funnel guest acquisition.

Loyalty as the First Touch

Think about your marketing funnel. You’re spending on Google Ads, metasearch, retargeting, paid social, maybe even a billboard if your CMO is feeling retro. Each of those touchpoints has one goal: get someone to click, consider, and hopefully book.

But here’s the trick: the conversion decision doesn’t happen on your billboard. It doesn’t even happen on your search ad. It happens the moment someone lands on your site and decides: Is there enough value here to make me choose direct over OTA, or to book now instead of later?

That’s where Laasie flips the script. By embedding instant rewards at the booking moment, you make loyalty part of the acquisition pitch. Instead of shouting “book direct because points,” you whisper: “book direct and here’s your Uber credit today.” That’s acquisition and loyalty working together in real time.

The Persona Connection

Our 10 loyalty personas prove this point. The Impulse Booker doesn’t care about long-term accrual they care about an immediate trigger that pushes them over the edge. The Bargain Hunter is comparing OTAs until they see your direct site offers $25 dining credit. The Social Sharer is deciding where to stay but the promise of a reward for posting tips them toward you.

In every case, loyalty doesn’t show up after the fact. It becomes the hook that drives acquisition.

Stop Burning the Funnel

Here’s the hard truth: hotels spend millions filling the top of the funnel with paid media, only to watch half of it leak out to OTAs at the bottom. It’s like pouring champagne into a colander.

By aligning loyalty with acquisition, you plug the leak. You protect your marketing spend by making your own channel the most compelling. You’re not just competing on rate… you’re competing on perceived value.

The Laasie Advantage

Laasie is designed as an embedded loyalty layer for acquisition. We slot directly into your booking engine or website, showing rewards in the flow, not buried in a post-stay email. We give guests thousands of choices from Starbucks to Lyft to spa credits, so they see real value right away.

The result? Higher conversion rates, lower OTA leakage, and more guests acquired into your ecosystem, not someone else’s.

Loyalty and acquisition aren’t separate. They’re the same game. And the hotels who understand that will be the ones still standing when the OTA tax becomes unbearable.