The bass hits you first, then the screams. In a packed Tokyo hotel ballroom over the summer, 200 fans went wild as global K-pop sensation Enhypen took the stage. What looked and felt like a concert arena was, in fact, a Marriott Bonvoy corporate event, which APEC marketing and chief commercial officer John Toomey describes as a “mini Super Bowl.”
“You should've seen these fans. They knew every word, every move,” he said in excitement. “Enhypen and Marriott Bonvoy actually share a lot of values. Both of us love connecting—us with our members, them with their fans—and both have a global reach. This felt like the right moment to tap into a group that's on the rise.”
The Enhypen collaboration follows last year’s tie-up with K-pop girl group Le Sserafim. That event netted around 4,000 new Bonvoy sign-ups. With Enhypen, Toomey is aiming higher: “We’re targeting 6,000 to 10,000 new sign-ups. 100 members have already used their points to attend the event. We want people to see Bonvoy as more than a hotel rewards programme. It should connect with their passions—music, sports, food, art, lifestyle—the things that make them who they are.”
And there may be no better laboratory than Japan for this experiment in emotional loyalty. Few markets have fandom culture as devoted, organised and willing to show up. Fans queue for hours for merch drops, travel across prefectures to see their idols, and treat limited-access events like once-in-a-lifetime moments.
“Even before Le Sserafim, we tested smaller programmes and tie-ups in Osaka and Tokyo, and they resonated really well,” says Ramesh Daryanani, VP global sales, loyalty operations & partnerships. A brand collaboration event in Tokyo also tackles a business gap for Marriott. “The domestic travel market here is huge,” he says. “But awareness levels are still relatively small for us. So, to be able to bring K-pop into the conversation, and create that kind of access… It’s a different way of speaking to this audience.”
Bonvoy may have been born in 2019 and faced three years of Covid headwinds, but it has already grown into a powerhouse with nearly 250 million members globally. That scale matters. Marriott manages 35 brands and 9,500 hotels worldwide, including 1,400 restaurants in the Asia Pacific alone.
Incremental growth in Bonvoy membership translates directly into recurring, high-margin commercial engagement. But in this day and age, beds, bookings and breakfast buffets aren’t enough to keep members emotionally invested. So, the ambition to colonise spaces like entertainment, culture and sport, once considered wildly aspirational, is now a deliberate part of its marketing strategy.
Competing in the fandom economy
At this point, K-pop artists have racked up more brand collabs than most of us could count in a lifetime. And the queue is only getting longer. A previous Campaign Asia feature spilled the tea on everyone from neighbourhood Starbucks to bougie houses like Gucci, Dior and Louis Vuitton lining up to get a little bit of sparkle sprinkled onto their next drop.
It’s not hard to see why. When Starbucks teamed up with Blackpink on a line-up of drinkware and lifestyle accessories, everything disappeared within three hours, briefly crashing virtual storefronts across Asia. Demand didn’t just spike—it detonated. So yes, the K-pop hype bubble isn’t popping any time soon, which means signing an idol or a group with millions of followers feels like a no-brainer.
The problem, of course, is sameness. When every brand is fishing in the same pond, how does any brand stand out? “Everyone’s fishing from the same pond, but it’s also what fish you catch, right? In this case, the fact that we have a global K-pop brand like Enhypen wanting to partner with us and vice versa, and the engagement we witness from fans shows us we’ve made the right decision in choosing the partner from the sea of K-pop artists out there,” says Daryanani.
A single, splashy sponsorship will move the needle, but when the goal is emotional memory, it requires intimacy and consistency. “We’re not going for mass appeal. The goal with K-pop fandom is never just to create a one-off moment. If we’d only done Le Sserafim last year, it would’ve been a miss,” says Toomey. “If we have to be at the centre of where dreams come true, we need consistency. We’re seeing greater engagement this year, and I’d like to think next year will be bigger still.”
And does that emotional ROI always show up as occupancy spikes? Or isn’t it meant to?
“It’s a long-term brand play and you can’t put a dollar value on what’s more valuable than the other,” Toomey explains. “From smaller activations to these shows, we’re building momentum.”
In other words: hype brings sign-ups; habit keeps them.
The barbell that holds it together
At a time when every marketing pound has to show receipts, momentum alone doesn’t cut it. Marriott’s loyalty programme is built around a barbell strategy that supports the everyday traveller on one end and the luxury guest on the other. As incomes rise, behaviours follow. “As people sort of evolve and sort of move from that mid-scale to the premium and to select and then premium, over that customer lifetime cycle, you've got a brand for everyone,” Daryanani says.
“And that's where you know Marriott Bonvoy, the programme becomes the glue, because when you're starting your journey there in 10 years from now, when you can afford that luxury trip or get onto a Ritz Carlton yacht, we're going to be with you all the way.”
Managing that promise across 22 markets is its own feat. “A one-size-fits-all strategy cannot work,” Toomey says. “Some campaigns are regional, others are tailored by country, and some go hyper-local. We have a flexible framework that allows us to adapt based on what's most relevant in each market.”
That flexibility shapes where money goes. Japan and India see heavier brand investment; Thailand leans towards performance.
Partnerships reflect the same rhythm. In Japan, the expansion of American Express co-branded cards anchors Bonvoy in the consumer’s everyday financial habits. Automatic Gold Elite status, richer free-night awards and fast-tracked paths to Platinum encourage cardholders to stay within the ecosystem and turn loyalty into a lived habit rather than an occasional treat.
In India, Marriott’s alliance with e-commerce giant Flipkart plays a different tune. Travel is growing exponentially there, but it’s not yet routine. Shopping is. So, a partnership with the country’s biggest e-commerce platform allows members to transfer points to SuperCoins and use them on household goods and quick-commerce orders.
“We have a combined audience of over 700 million people that can buy, and we're giving them a partnership that unlocks travel but also unlocks benefits across both ecosystems for people to enjoy,” Daryanani says. “So today, if a Marriott Bonvoy member wants to use their points to buy groceries on quick commerce, they can transfer those points and do that, and vice versa.”
This is the quiet logic behind Marriott’s strategy: be useful to the traveller booking a yacht charter and to the shopper stretching value week to week. If the programme meets both needs as incomes and interests change, loyalty becomes a steady companion rather than an occasional reward.
As for copycats? Daryanani shrugs. “You get, in any industry, a lot of copycats. But we have 35 brands, 9,500 hotels. In this region alone, we have 1,400 restaurants tied to our hotels. I’d say to some of the other hotel groups—good luck.”
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