Author Archive

19 March 2020

While the hit might be stronger than ever this time, it is certainly not the first shock the travel industry has to endure. But a shockingly repeating pattern can be observed with each such crisis: the dive into invisibility of most loyalty programs.

25 September 2019

Several airline failures within a couple of days raise the question how important loyalty programs should be for airlines with a predominant focus on low frequency leisure travellers. While each case might be different, some common considerations certainly apply.

02 September 2019

Looking at recent developments, it seems more and more difficult to ensure that partnership revenue will be really a given thing for Frequent Flyer Programs forever. And actually not all factors are under the control of airlines.

11 July 2019

When Emirates recently announced its intention to start to unbundle the Business Class product, an industry-wide discussion was initiated. Such approaches do already exist, however, and the true question is what expectations this creates with passengers.

01 July 2019

The tie-up between the loyalty programs of Air France KLM and Accor is definitely beneficial to customers. But will it justify the potentially huge costs for the two programs, too? It could, but it is far from sure.

10 April 2019

With United announcing the removal of award charts in favour of a dynamic award pricing, many fear hidden increases of award prices. The more general question is though to what degree price increases in loyalty programs are justified at all.

02 April 2019

When loyalty managers are obliged to declare publicly why they offer third-party redemptions, the standard reply is to offer a wider choice to customers. Is this truly the honest answer in the case of airline and hotel programs?

25 March 2019

With all the necessary safety-related discussions, the current Max 8 discussion demonstrates that airlines and customers don’t speak the same language. This is also true when it comes to the loyalty question – and prevents actually many airlines to leverage the loyalty potential better.

06 March 2019

With Loyalty & Awards now safely behind us and all delegates returned from Paris, it is time for a – very personal – review on the event, which did represent a certain management challenge for a medium-sized organisation like ours.

02 January 2019

With an increasing number of non-air partnerships coming to a silent end, the critical question for loyalty managers should perhaps be why this is happening at all and what can be done to avoid that things turn sour between partners.