Extend elite status or Not to extend elite status? That's the million-dollar question circling around the travel loyalty industry lately. The unprecedented grounding of aircraft, significant decline in demand, and empty hotel rooms are forcing management to be creative and discover new ways to generate cash, stimulate demand, and in some cases - survive as a company. Throughout history, there have...

"Show me the money!" That's what Jerry Maguire says to keep his Client in Cameron Crowe's 1996 film starring Tom Cruise in which Jerry, a sports agent, is let go by his employer and finds his own way. It's also an excellent mindset for those seeking successful airline careers. Over the last 40 years, the airline industry CFOs have perfected the...

Take a moment to consider the following: Who are the most valuable passengers to the airline? How do the airlines track and measure total passenger loyalty? Today, airline loyalty members represent between 20% and 70% of total pax depending on the airline, and it means there is a significant percentage of passengers who are not loyalty program members. The more sophisticated...

Airline feedback is broken. Everyone knows it, but nobody will admit it. Customer feedback surveys with static questions that demonstrate the airline has no idea what the customer experience should be. Very few airline employees have ever held elite status in their career - and that creates a significant disconnect between airline management and loyal passengers. Endless focus groups and panels, where...

Loyalty programs have been slowly opening up to a wider audience, but many brands are taking steps that are simply derivatives of traditional loyalty programs rather than outside-of-the box reboots, which is where the big opportunities lie. Two trends offer travel marketers a chance to take a quantum leap. First, is that travel points earned from credit cards is a...

Pitching your product to an airline loyalty program? Here are 5 tips from someone who has run a global airline loyalty program into the most profitable and successful years for the airline. These tips are brutally honest. No sugar coating today. Put your seat in the upright position, fasten your seatbelt by putting the buckle into the clasp, and brace yourself for...

Successful data-driven airlines typically attribute value of the airline loyalty data they collect within the loyalty program based on the commercial application of that data. That is to say - how much top-line revenue that data can generate versus what income could be generated without that data. That is why investors, financial analysts and board members expect data-driven airlines to...

Looking back over the past 10-years, could we have predicted the airline loyalty industry would be where it's at today? Could we have predicted that airlines would buy-back loyalty programs they once had sold to third parties? Could we have predicted that United Airlines would stop rewarding members based on distance? Okay, yes, we probably could have predicted these. However, it's fair...

Did Velocity really double in value over 5 years and is it worth AUD $2bn? Virgin Australia announced its intention to buy back its 35% stake in Velocity for AUD $700M. Read the full ASX release here. In 2014, Virgin Australia Holdings Limited (VHA) sold a 35% stake in Velocity to Affinity Partners for $336M, valuing the business at close to...

Creating a new airline loyalty status tier - part two In the previous paper, creating a new airline loyalty status tier - part one, we looked at loyalty member behaviour challenges and how a new elite tier would be viewed from both the program and member perspective. This article picks up where part one left, and digs deep into the considerations...

Creating a new loyalty status tier can make or break loyalty program economics. From both internal and public perception - new loyalty tiers are exciting! They ooze optimism and are a sign of strength for the loyalty program. In recent years seen a bunch of new airline loyalty tiers hit the market - including some realignments. Most notably, these include: Qantas Lifetime Platinum...

Under the Hood: What the Qantas Frequent Flyer Changes Really Mean For Members. Last week, Qantas announced an overhaul of the frequent flyer program. The Australian media hyped up interest, but do the changes live up to the "biggest change in the programs 32 years?" This article will dissect the underlying logic behind the changes, and provide insight as to what the...

Loyalty game mechanics can be a massive revenue driver for both airlines, and their frequent flyer programs. Getting to the advanced state of leveraging from loyalty game mechanics requires data collection, loyalty tracking, and booking integration. Frequent Flyer Tracking Metrics Do your frequent flyers go out of their way to spend more with the airline? How is incremental spend by top-tier frequent flyers...

Breakdown of the United Airlines MileagePlus Program Changes. Recently, United Airlines MileagePlus announced that from November 15th, 2019, the program would be changing. The program will be moving away from fixed Saver and Everyday fixed miles rates, and removing the award chart. That means MileagePlus members will lose transparency on the number of miles required to book a flight - until the...

Do you understand your customers? How do airlines identify customer needs? How can loyalty programs use that data to improve customer loyalty? Understanding your customers is more important now than at any other point in the history of the business. Customers have a choice of which brands they want to transact with, and if your brand isn't fulfilling their emotional needs a customer...

Why are frequent flyer programs constantly changing? Before we get to the nitty-gritty of frequent flyer programs logic, consider the following scenarios: You pay full price business and first class tickets. After buying that ticket, you meticulously spend 15-minutes scouring through the aircraft seat map to ensure you have the best possible seat allocation. Queuing at the airport check-in desk that has an...

Increase loyalty revenue with these simple tips My mission with Travel Data Daily has always been to push the loyalty industry forward, usher in better use of technology, improve critical and creative thinking within the industry, help programs increase loyalty revenue, and most important of all - so more consumers can have a more rewarding experience. After all - I’m...

Measuring loyalty success through share of wallet tracking is more powerful than traditional metrics. What would your frequent flyer program do if the most valuable frequent flyer started flying with a direct competitor? Does the program know how much share of wallet is being captured? Which tracking tools does the program have set-up to send alerts if the health of the program...

How airline loyalty programs use big data to drive new revenue The past few years have seen a wave of travel companies member accounts compromised which have rocked the industry. Cathay Pacific had 9.4M accounts compromised. British Airways had 380,000 card payments breached. Raddison hotels had up to 10% loyalty program accounts compromised. Hyatt twice had malware embedded into payment systems that had a...

Change is in the air, and disrupting airline loyalty programs is coming from an unlikely source. Globally, airline loyalty programs generate billions of dollars in sales every year. They are the pinnacle of all loyalty programs, and they're what every company dreams their loyalty program could be like- scalable, highly profitable, technology-driven, and with access to one of the most...

Consider today's problem... You take a flight to see family for Christmas, and you earn some frequent flyer miles...You buy a coffee from Starbucks once or twice...You fill up with fuel from a Shell station and sign up for their fuel rewards program...You purchase something at a store and the cashier gets you to sign up for their rewards program. And...

Airline loyalty breakage is growing discussion point for many frequent flyer programs Len Llaguno - Founder and CEO of SnapShotML, firm providing a financial measurement for loyalty programs, about the challenges that loyalty programs face when trying to optimize the tradeoff between breakage and engagement. He has spent nearly ten years helping many of the world's largest loyalty programs manage program...

NB: Originally published on UXPAMagazine.org, Sep 2017 edition and available on jpang.io. Layout adapted for UX purposes. Great UX is data-driven. The data itself is usually seen as numeric quantitative data, but in many contexts, that's not a sufficient descriptor. Let's take online shopping as an example. We browse online for the best prices, visit retail stores for comparison and may end up purchasing...

Cathay Pacific Marco Polo loyalty program changes in 2015 could have cost the company over $1B in lost revenue Big data can now predict when a high-value frequent flyer is unhappy with an airline loyalty program and is at greatest risk of switching their business to another carrier, and loyalty program. Cathay Pacific Marco Polo loyalty program made critical program...

Loyalty program announcements so far this year indicate a major sea change. From the customer perspective, it amounts to a Revolution - where brands are finally giving into what has been a 'peaceful demonstration' gaining momentum for several years - namely that it is too difficult to accumulate much value among so many incompatible loyalty point currencies/programs - so consumers...