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How loyal are you to your hotel?

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If you are a member of a hotel loyalty program, you are probably not really very loyal to your hotel at all.

That is one finding of a survey of about 4,000 travelers by Deloitte & Touche about how they book hotels and what guides their decisions.

Only one out of four travelers spent more than 75% of their nights at their preferred brand, and 65% of frequent travelers reported staying in two or more hotel brands in the past six months, according to the survey, released last week.

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Only 19% said that a loyalty program was very important when choosing a hotel.

What are more important factors to travelers? Room rates ranked as very important to 47% of the travelers, with free parking, comfort and location also ranking high.

For loyalty programs to succeed, the Deloitte study suggested, hotels should crunch some data and find out what is most meaningful to their guests, such as free Wi-Fi, parking, breakfast and lower rates.

Laurie Goldstein , a spokeswoman for Marriott International, one of the nation’s biggest hotel chains, disagreed with the study’s conclusions.

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Goldstein said guests are exchanging the points they accumulate under the chain’s loyalty program for valuable stuff, including car rentals, airline tickets, music downloads, merchandise and event tickets.

“You can even download e-books with your points,” she said.

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Follow Hugo Martin on Twitter at @hugomartin

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