Marriott Bonvoy added 43 million members last year. It now has 271 million, these members account for 68% of Marriott's stays worldwide. It's one of the most successful loyalty programmes ever built, and it makes complete sense for Marriott. When you operate thousands of hotels across dozens of brands, points are how you keep a traveller inside your world as they move from city to city. It's a well designed answer to the problem of scale. Aman has a different problem. Its never had a loyalty program. What it does have is a T-shirt. Stay seven times and they give you one that says "Aman Junkie." That's about as close as it gets to a loyalty programme. And yet people keep coming back (for a night that cost well above $1,000). I find this more interesting the longer I think about it. Points give people a reason to return that has nothing to do with the room. For Marriott, that's the right call. But it means the hotel itself doesn't have to do all the work. Aman never gave itself that option. So the hotel has to do all the work. Every decision comes down to one question: is this good enough that someone will come back for nothing but the experience? You can see the answer in how the brand is built. Around 35 hotels in 20 countries, most with fewer than 55 rooms. Say once you don't want alcohol in the room and you'll never be asked again. The people who run the brand describe the goal as making you feel you're staying at the home of a very wealthy friend, rather than inside a hotel following a robotic service. And it works. There are guests who plan their travel around where Aman has a property. Two companies, both very good at what they do, reaching the same outcome from opposite directions. One builds a reason to return. The other builds something people can't find anywhere else. It's something I think about with the events we host. It's tempting to reach for a mechanism. But if people need a reason to come back, the experience hasn't given them one yet.