Marriott has been advertising its new loyalty and rewards program called Bonvoy, which was created to merge Marriott’s loyalty program with Starwood’s loyalty program following its acquisition of Starwood. The call to action in the television commercial I have seen numerous times is “Join at Marriott.com.” Based on a Whois changed I noticed yesterday, it is possible that the primary domain name for Bonvoy is going to change in the near future.
Whois records show that Bonvoy.com just transferred to CSC Corporate Domains, Inc. CSC is a corporate domain name and brand management company that manages the domain name portfolios of some of the largest companies in the world.
The Bonvoy.com domain name has privacy enabled on the Whois record, but my guess is that the domain name was acquired on behalf of Marriott. Marriott.com is also registered with CSC, as is MarriottBonvoy.com. I think it is a safe bet that Marriott acquired the domain name. At the time of publication, Bonvoy.com does not seem to resolve to an active website, although I presume that will change shortly.
Acquiring Bonvoy.com was a smart move by Marriott. According to Marriott’s website, Bonvoy is the loyalty program for the hotel chain’s 30 brands, including Marriott, Ritz Carlton, W Hotels, Sheraton, Le Meridien, and the many other Marriott-owned brands. Having its own domain name will make it easier for Bonvoy members to manage their perks and membership benefits.
Prior to the change of registrant, Bonvoy.com was registered to an entity in Washington state. Archive.org records show that it had been a group travel-related business in the past. “Bon Voy” is short for the French phrase, bon voyage, which essentially means “have a nice trip.”
One other important aspect to note is that Marriott and Starwood suffered a massive data breach. that was disclosed in 2018. Acquiring the brand match Bonvoy.com domain name will be helpful in establishing trust. Had another company operated Bonvoy.com, it could have been confusing to Marriott customers who may have confused Bonvoy.com with the Marriott loyalty program. Had Bonvoy.com been reactivated with any type of input form, it could have put Marriott customer data at risk if it was operated by a third party.
Bonvoy is a nice brand name, and acquiring Bonvoy.com was a good move by Marriott.
The price of this domain name should not be low.
Why? The name is nothing remarkable. It is missing 3 letter on the end.
I could understand using the name Bon Voyage but in all honesty I have never seen or heard anyone use the short version Bonvoy. I don’t like it personally.
I wish companies like this would stick to a single brand name. It’s confusingly annoying when they use multiples.
I disagree a bit on this.
I would imagine regular customers of higher end chains like Ritz Carlton, Le Meridien, W Hotels, and others would see a Marriott branded loyalty program as a step down in quality. I don’t love the Bonvoy branding, but it has a bit more of a distinguished branding.
The new line of Bonvoy robes supposedly are microfiber not terry.
Ok… and?
And you have to pay for them.
https://www.shopmarriott.com/product.aspx?microfiber-robe
Why would anyone want to buy a robe with a hotel logo on it? Even stranger, why would anyone want to take a used hotel robe?
Although not for everyone, people buy high-end hotel robes all the time, worldwide. Oftentimes the value prop (price/quality) is much greater than if you were to purchase a similar quality robe in a retail setting.
The tone of you comment above was condescending and in the end, foolish.
Your comment would hold more weight if you provided a comparison between the two options.
I’m more of an air dry guy.
Neologisms and portmanteau words were the rage in the early aughts. Verizon, Accenture. Cingular. Vivendi. And many more. Verizon just rebranded one of its subsidiaries to Spansive (filed trademark and purchased the .com). These names for branding have become popular again. A Fortune 50 company acquired one of mine for a very high price (sorry, but NDA, and a large law firm (one of the 10 biggest) representing the company). I like Bonvoy – short for Bon voyage. Also has a nice sound like Envoy — Bon (good). Generally, the brokers (marksmen, etc) approach the owners with 5 figure offers, but they usually sell for 6 figures, unless the domain owner is desperate. I’d be curious to see what Verizon/Pi paid for spansive.com for its rebranding last month. Ironically, Spansive was a possible name for AT&T to rebrand its AT&T wireless division. Caveat: these names are risky. The aftermarket sales for these names are nowhere near key word .com domains, as the latter (keyword generic .com names) also are great investments. Sportsbet.com, Crypto.com, Chocolate.com, are super names, but also super investments. A name like Queen.com has even more value, in my opinion, because it’s a key word and it could also be branded/trademarked unless you’re selling “queens” (Queen Elizabeth for 100 million, Queen Helga, etc ) LOL
But, yes, these neologisms are back in the branding world, and Landor and other large branding companies are getting more assignments from large companies to create brands with these types of names.
Who knows what Marriot paid Landor to come up with the name Bonvoy? usually name assignments are between 250-500 K? Then the broker? etc