Originally Posted by
artemis
I suspect you're right, although I understand that UA's website now shows nearly all *A awards, which is a pleasant advance. But overall the airlines are caught in a delicate balancing act: they need their FF programs to be enticing, but not TOO enticing. They'd be in trouble if lots of people actually started redeeming all those points being so freely given out by the affiliated CC companies (especially with flights already running so full - there's not much "wasted" inventory available to give away these days).
Right. They want to make it difficult to redeem awards, especially aspriational ones. So VFTW's award booking business seems safe.
Maybe the added complexity of administering a cafeteria-style plan has made them hold back for now? A plain-vanilla plan is easier to set up and run, although it might not make the users as happy as a FF plan that could be tailored to reflect individual preferences.
And the software/management for a more complex system appears to be what Deloitte is pitching. @:-)^
Originally Posted by 84fiero
Check out especially, exhibit 2 of the study. Only 32% of Business Travelers and just over half of High Frequency Business Travelers agreed/strongly agreed that their preferred airline has the best loyalty program. And HFBT are the most desirable market segment. That's just one example but the very broad brush with which VFTW rants against the study makes that post pretty worthless. One wonders why VFTW has such a visceral reaction.
Sure, because most HFBTs tend to use the airline that can get them from A to B, and take the FF bennies as a perk rather than as the main attraction. If a HFBT lives in SF or Houston or DC, they are UNITED whether they like it or not (and most these days seem to not!
). Same with Dallas and AA, CLT and US, etc. You may hate the FF program, but you are stuck with the airline. Folks like VFTW can buck that trend and be elite on a 'non-hometown' airline because their priorities are different that the HFBT: they care about the elite perks as much as if not more than getting from A to B.
What this really says is that FF programs only matter marginally, as your highest yield customers are also the ones least concerned about the program. Hence the logical and inevitable move to revenue-based programs. But I don't thing THAT hurts an award booking service, either. Because people with enough high-yield tickets to earn lots of miles in a revenue-based system are either doing it on their employer/client's dime or have their own scratch. Either way, those folks are generally too busy/rich to deal with the complexities of booking aspirational travel, and would prefer to outsource it to a booking service. MY suspicion is that the visceral reaction against the sales pitch is that Deloitte did not bother to ask (nor hire nor pay) any points and miles bloggers what they thought. And since THEY are the true experts on FF programs, the Deloitte pitch must be garbage.
Non-sequitorially, there is an interesting side-story here. Back in 2010 United dumped D&T as its auditor. As a result, Deloitte consulting dumped United as a preferred carrier, bucking the HFBT tendency I describe above. Thousands of 3-4-5 consultants were forced to fly other airlines on non-nonstop routes.
There was quite the hue and cry among the employees as you can imagine, especially those based at SFO, IAD and DEN as they all lost their ability to accumulate and use United miles as well as their ability to get places non-stop. Suddenly many of them realized the importance and value of the MP program they used to take for granted.
There is, naturally, a FlyerTalk thread about it:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...iscussion.html