MilesBuzz! - Points International Taps Travelocity to Power 'Book With Points'

TORONTO, Aug. 15 /CNW/ - Points International Ltd. (TSX: PTS;
OTCBB: PTSEF) - owner and operator of the world's leading reward-management
portal, Points.com - is pleased to announce an exclusive agreement with
Travelocity to develop "Book with Points," a new product that lets
loyalty-program members use miles and points from their various reward
programs to directly book travel services. With this product, a major
innovation in both the loyalty and travel industries, Points International
taps directly into the estimated $15 billion North American/European reward
travel industry.
"Travelocity has the online booking industry's most sophisticated and
flexible technology, and their access to travel packages, hotel rooms, car
rentals and airline seats is phenomenal," said Christopher Barnard, President
of Points International. "Points International's partnerships and experience
in the loyalty industry will combine exceptionally well with Travelocity's
booking systems and we are thrilled to work with Travelocity to provide
consumers with a new, innovative travel service/booking option."
"Book with Points" will allow loyalty program members access to
Travelocity's leading online booking engine. They will use points or miles to
book and purchase the travel reward, exactly as if they were purchasing their
travel with cash rather than loyalty points and miles.
"The most significant challenge that our Loyalty program partners around
the world face, as they grow their successful enterprises, is providing access
to rewards for their best customers," said Rob MacLean, Points International's
CEO. "While millions of flights, hotel nights and other rewards are provided
every year, there continues to be demand for even more access and
availability. Our agreement with Travelocity is uniquely positioned to help
loyalty programs finally follow through on the 'any award, any time' travel
promise, and to do so using our two companies' world-leading technologies."
"We look forward to working very closely with the Points.com team in
launching 'Book with Points' to our mutual customers," said Richard Harris,
senior vice president, strategy and distribution for Travelocity. "It's a
product with great potential and we are excited about the opportunity." The
Book with Points product will be available both on the Points.com consumer
portal and as a stand-alone, branded product for individual loyalty program
operators. The companies expect to have the product operational on the
Points.com portal in the fourth quarter of 2006. The product, fully supported
by Travelocity's customer service, will initially focus on hotels and broaden
over time.
This new agreement continues and expands the relationship between Points
International and Sabre Holdings(TM) (owner of Travelocity) that began in 2002
with a strategic relationship with the Sabre Airlines Solutions division.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/August2006/15/c5390.html

A powerful idea but I'm skeptical of the execution.

Points.com doesn't generally provide good value on currency exchanges, I wonder what the value of a point under this scenario is going to be.

Diners Club tailored travel offers 1.25c/point. Amex offers 1c IIRC. United Choices offers 1 cent on UA purchases, ~ 0.8 cents on hotels/rental cars. I generally consider this to be poor return, but (1) I don't see how a program offering less than 1 cent per point can succeed and (2) it's not clear to me how Points.com can make points worth 1c under this scenario and earn any kind of return (though I haven't seen their business plan!).

The idea of miles as money certainly isn't new. But proprietary currencies seek to both reward purchases and foster brand loyalty. The United Choices program lets you spend your points as money on United (at least in the airline space). Using one airline's miles to purchase travel on a competitor seems to be a bit of a longer shot, undermining the value proposition of the programs themselves.

Likelihood of success seems low to me.

Hmmm, but I wonder what fare class such travel would book into; even with a not-great exchange rate (although a decent one would help), it might be nice to be able to use miles to earn miles...

Interesting...let us see, however, the devil (the details rather than a press release).

Why do I sense disappointment in my future?

I have a soft spot in my heart for Travelocity. Years ago they sent to me a big box with a Plexiglass coffee mug and other logoed promotional items, including a letter sharing how happy they were for my patronage, explaining that I was one of their best customers. How really nice of them! Even so, I migrated to Orbitz and then later (most recently via FT) to a combination of ITA, Farecompare, and yes, even orbitz, expedia, and travelocity with bookings at the carrier sites, (with a few exceptions like Site59) but Travelocity was first. Points.com on the other hand is for me a relatively new and unimpressive discovery. I stumbled across them about the same time as FT and entered all my program data, thinking it'd be cleaner (and web based!) than my Excel spreadsheet. No go. If I can't have all the data in one place what good is it? And on points.com I get messages like "Delta does not allow Points.com to display SkyMiles balances.", "Balance unavailable", "At this time, Gold Points' members holding a membership card from the following organization are not eligible to participate on Points.com", "Some of the information you provided does not match the records of Membership Rewards®.", or the more cryptic entries like "There were some problems with your account. " or "Confirm information". In total of my participation in ten airline programs, nine car rental progams, ten hotel programs, and 14 credit card programs, the points.com Balance Tracker currently tracks 3 (as of right now; it seems to vary) (Early Returns=15,431; AA=189,777; Priority Club® Rewards=33,538) The other programs listed show the errors above or a hyphen "-" (what ever that means). And they have some offers for me, including 78 things I can do with my AA miles. For example, they suggest, I can swap 20,000 AA miles for 3,162 Frontier Miles. What?! :eek: I'm not the brightest person on this board but I did grajate hi skol and I can tell you...
well, I'm not going to say it. ;)
WHO would do that?!
Who?!
So, is this a great idea? @:-) ?

:rolleyes:

I have a soft spot in my heart for Travelocity. Years ago they sent to me a big box with a Plexiglass coffee mug and other logoed promotional items, including a letter sharing how happy they were for my patronage, explaining that I was one of their best customers. How really nice of them! Even so, I migrated to Orbitz and then later (most recently via FT) to a combination of ITA, Farecompare, and yes, even orbitz, expedia, and travelocity with bookings at the carrier sites, (with a few exceptions like Site59) but Travelocity was first. Points.com on the other hand is for me a relatively new and unimpressive discovery. I stumbled across them about the same time as FT and entered all my program data, thinking it'd be cleaner (and web based!) than my Excel spreadsheet. No go. If I can't have all the data in one place what good is it? And on points.com I get messages like "Delta does not allow Points.com to display SkyMiles balances.", "Balance unavailable", "At this time, Gold Points' members holding a membership card from the following organization are not eligible to participate on Points.com", "Some of the information you provided does not match the records of Membership Rewards®.", or the more cryptic entries like "There were some problems with your account. " or "Confirm information". In total of my participation in ten airline programs, nine car rental progams, ten hotel programs, and 14 credit card programs, the points.com Balance Tracker currently tracks 3 (as of right now; it seems to vary) (Early Returns=15,431; AA=189,777; Priority Club® Rewards=33,538) The other programs listed show the errors above or a hyphen "-" (what ever that means). And they have some offers for me, including 78 things I can do with my AA miles. For example, they suggest, I can swap 20,000 AA miles for 3,162 Frontier Miles. What?! :eek: I'm not the brightest person on this board but I did grajate hi skol and I can tell you...
well, I'm not going to say it. ;)
WHO would do that?!
Who?!
So, is this a great idea? @:-) ?

:rolleyes:

Your post was most informative...thanks for providing your experiences. I am now suspicious of the site you mentioned.

Lots of views on this thread, but not many comments. I think that we are all sitting back and waiting to see what they really have to offer. I am sure that alot of us will have something to say about this new program then.