Author Archive

21 July 2015

Loyalty programs are full of promises – and hardly any keeps all of them. The price of that can be very steep and actually lead to the exact opposite of the purpose of those programs, creating dissuasive behaviour and making customers turn away.

17 June 2015

Etihad Guest has surprised by the announcement that it is no longer in the business of buying other FFPs, but wants to develop into a global coalition program instead. Looking at the lessons learned from PINS, what are their chances to succeed?

19 May 2015

A new EU regulation coming into force soon will change the credit card system fundamentally. The times we know (and appreciate) about earning huge amounts of loyalty points through credit cards might soon be over.

15 May 2015

Regularly most loyalty programs increase their award prices. Depending on how you look at the question, this approach might actually lack quite a bit of logic and makes any hike in award prices look very questionable, to say the least.

31 March 2015

One week ago, Lufthansa faced the worst tragedy in its history. CRM should play a crucial role in such moments, but was completely absent ever since then at the German carrier. A missed opportunity and teaching warning for anybody else.

19 March 2015

When Delta removed the SkyMiles award tables from its website, it got a lot of bad publicity. Delta is certainly not the first loyalty program to hide the truth at least a bit, but the underlying question is whether any loyalty program can actually afford lack of transparency.

02 March 2015

At the recent Loyalty 2015 conference, the winners of the Loyalty Awards were honoured as well. Among the winners figured the rather unknown Azul Airlines from Brazil. A contemplation that each company can make a difference with some smart innovations at its loyalty program.

05 February 2015

Next to all the fuss about Delta and United, it was a bit overseen that another major program has just moved to a revenue basis – South African’s Voyager. But unlike Delta and United, it also applies a revenue approach to redemption. Why it can’t work.

27 January 2015

In the very early days of alliances, there was this vision of one global Frequent Flyer Program for each alliance. For reasons we all know, this vision has never come true – and it might actually be better like that.

11 December 2014

On 01 January, Delta will switch its SkyMiles program to a revenue-based program. This will change the way we have to work with such programs – and opens up indeed some new opportunities.