Customer Lifetime Value: The Quiet Force That Actually Builds Great Hotels

Hotels love a full house. We celebrate sell-out nights, RevPAR spikes, record weekends and those “best month ever” WhatsApp messages that briefly distract us from tomorrow’s forecast. We obsess over pace, pick-up, channel mix and the booking that arrived at 2:47am via an OTA we pretend not to rely on.

But quietly, often invisibly, the real money checks in without fanfare. It’s not the guest who stayed once. It’s the guest who stays again. And again. And again.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the guest who never really checks out. They just keep returning under different booking references. Despite being one of the most powerful financial levers in hospitality, CLV remains one of the least discussed.

What CLV Really Means for Hotels (Beyond the Spreadsheet)

At its simplest, CLV is the total value a guest generates across their entire relationship with your hotel, not just one stay.

That includes:

• Rooms

• Food & beverage

• Meetings and events

• Referrals

• Brand advocacy

• Lower acquisition costs

Yet many hotels still treat each stay as a standalone transaction:

• Win the booking

• Deliver the experience

• Send the invoice

• Hope for a review

• Start again tomorrow

CLV forces a different mindset. It asks:

• Who could this guest become over time?

• Who do they influence?

• What future value are we nurturing—or losing?

Once you start thinking this way, the economics of hospitality change.

The Quiet Power of a “Good Guest”

Let’s do some basic realistic hotel maths.

One business traveller:

• 15 nights per year

• £220 average rate

• £60 ancillary spend per stay

That’s ~£4,200 annually.

Extend that over 6–8 years. Add colleagues, meetings, referrals and more direct bookings. That single guest can easily be worth £30,000–£50,000+.

CLV isn’t loud. It compounds quietly over time. And because it arrives gradually, many hotels fail to see it at all.

Returning guests spend more, cost less to acquire, forgive mistakes more easily and become organic marketers through word-of-mouth, reviews and recommendations.

This is revenue that doesn’t require discounting or commissions. It’s relationship-driven profit.

Why Some Guests Matter Disproportionately More

Not all guests are equal. Some fill rooms. Others fill pipelines.

Senior decision makers—CEOs, board members, partners and regional leaders, don’t just travel. They influence:

• Preferred hotel lists

• Corporate travel policies

• Conference destinations

• Brand partnerships

One strong relationship can unlock hundreds or thousands of future room nights.

Entrepreneurs and founders are often overlooked early on. Their first stays may be modest and irregular. Then funding lands. Teams grow. Travel scales fast. Hotels that recognise founders early often become their default base, and long-term hospitality partner. Many of today’s most valuable corporate accounts started as one founder booking one room.

Influencers (the real kind) aren’t defined by follower counts. They’re industry leaders, consultants, journalists, operators and connectors. Often working quietly behind the scenes, they shape opinion and drive recommendations you’ll never directly attribute. One loyal influencer can generate dozens of bookings without ever tagging your brand.

CLV isn’t just revenue. It’s reach.

So Why Is CLV Still Undervalued?

Because CLV:

• Doesn’t show up instantly

• Lives across departments

• Requires long-term thinking

• Isn’t owned by one team

Revenue focuses on today. Marketing focuses on acquisition. Operations focus on delivery. CLV lives in the gaps between them, and that’s where value is often lost.

Meanwhile, hotels spend heavily on acquisition:

• OTA commissions

• Paid search

• Promotions

• Discounting

Often 20–30% of room revenue is gone before the guest arrives.

Repeat guests? They book direct, spend more, cost less and provide resilience when markets tighten.

Retention: The Most Profitable "Unsexy" Strategy

Retention doesn’t feel exciting. No launch. No fireworks. No campaign buzz.

But even a 5% increase in retention can dramatically lift profitability through higher frequency, lower costs and stronger emotional loyalty. Hotels built on loyalty survive downturns. Hotels built purely on demand spikes don’t.

Where BHpeople Comes In: Turning CLV Into Reality

This is where BHpeople (www.bhpeople.com), an app currently in development, becomes critical. The challenge with CLV isn’t understanding it, it’s operationalising it. BHpeople is designed to help hotels recognise, retain and grow high-value guests earlier, without adding complexity for already stretched teams.

1. Identifying high-value guests earlier: BHpeople helps hotels spot influence, roles and network potential before years of stay history exist, so relationships can be built before the full value arrives.

2. Understanding people, not just bookings: Traditional systems track stays. BHpeople focuses on who the guest is, what they influence and why they matter commercially, shifting hotels from transactional recognition to relationship intelligence.

3. Empowering staff, not scripting them: CLV is built by people. BHpeople surfaces meaningful guest context so teams can make thoughtful, human decisions, not just follow SOPs.

4. Making retention feel natural: Loyalty comes from feeling known, valued and remembered. BHpeople supports continuity across visits and teams, reducing friction, the silent killer of loyalty.

5. Creating a shared CLV language: BHpeople helps align revenue, operations and leadership around long-term guest value. CLV stops being a metric and becomes a habit.

CLV as a Brand Strategy

The most successful hotels don’t win on rate alone. They become the default choice. The trusted option. The familiar favourite.

CLV thinking turns guests into advocates, stays into habits and hotels into long-term partners. BHpeople supports this shift by helping hotels focus less on transactions and more on relationships that compound over time.

Final Thought: The Most Valuable Asset Doesn’t Sleep in a Room

Hotels invest heavily in buildings, design, technology and marketing. But the most valuable asset doesn’t depreciate, it compounds.

Customer Lifetime Value isn’t just a KPI. It’s a philosophy. And BHpeople exists to help hotels see that value sooner, nurture it better and retain it longer.

Because the real luxury in hospitality isn’t thread count or square footage: It’s being the hotel someone comes back to, without even thinking about it.