How do you create a long term relationship with someone who is brand agnostic? That is exactly what hospitality and travel companies across the industry are asking themselves as guest loyalty is historically low.

Sabre Hospitality has recently commissioned Forrester to conduct research on consumer expectations and hotels' ability to deliver on those expectations. The report reveals that loyalty is still up for grabs, creating an opportunity for the world's largest hotel brands to act on guests' current lack of brand attachment.

With over 113 brands amongst the top 10 hoteliers, companies such as Marriott, IHG and Hilton are uniquely positioned to dominate guest loyalty while creating distinct and dependable guest experiences.

As global hotel giants merge, continue to grow their development pipelines and create new brands, the reality that they could own guest loyalty across the value chain continues to become more of a reality.

The challenge is that they must think beyond the basic point system in order to create guest loyalty that lasts; incentivizing their customers to come back time after time.

Greater loyalty = revenue

In our new study, Customer Experience in Hospitality, Forrester found that a 1-point increase in its Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) score — their benchmark that measures customer experience quality and loyalty — provides $6.52 in annual incremental revenue per customer per year.

Think about what this could mean for a company like Marriott, who currently has 54M loyalty members (which will be more like 75M when merged with Starwood).

Increasing their CX index by just 1 point for their combined loyalty members alone could create $489M in incremental revenue per year. Imagine what that could look like across their entire customer base.

The reality is that there is a huge opportunity across the hospitality industry to win guest loyalty. We believe that creating a distinct guest experience enabled by technology is a vital step to begin to capture a guest's lifetime share of wallet.

Download our latest study: Customer Experience in Hospitality for key insights to start 2016 generating loyalty that drives revenue.