Originally Posted by
passy777
That's a brilliant summary on what many may perceive the folly of loyalty schemes.
Of course there are some perks staying loyal to a brand or product, but loyalty has to work both ways and the current offerings and failures by BA must surely now have many BAEC members questioning if the benefits actually outweigh the negatives.
I always find the term loyalty scheme somewhat misleading, I think of loyalty as supporting without logical reason, for example I'm loyal to Spurs, which over the years has cost me a fortune in money, and the emotional cost is incalculable.
An airline/hotel 'loyalty scheme' should be a much clearer transaction, I travel/stay with you, and you offer me these extra benefits and (cash like) rewards. But clearly as the airline/hotel would wish an element of blind faith starts to creep into your behaviour. The airline/hotel POV is they seek to tie you to them, by offering just enough that you start to, by habit, and without real consideration look at BA, Hilton or whoever first. Clearly from the customers POV you have to escape that behaviour and consider each transaction individually, but that is easier said than done. How do you do that? What value can I assign to the FW when at LHR, should I put a financial value to that slight air of superiority at using the special part of the airport, should I value the lounge, when mostly it just makes me angry at the noise and mess, and the horrible toilets. But then I think of the crowd and lack of privacy the terminal offers and the longe seems a big upgrade. What price do I put on getting the Exit row on short haul, and paying a few thousand Avios and £35 for lots of European destinations. I feel even if I created a spreadsheet and attempted to value each aspect of BAEC it would be a entirely subjective and irrelevant exercise. There's also the separation between BA and BAEC, many like Qatar, I'm happy on AA when travelling to the US, so that to some extent creates another decision in the choices we make when booking a flight, and deciding where to attribute the FF benefits.
So ultimately it's how do I 'feel' about BAEC, right now I feel it works for me. Now if I fallen into BA trap then so be it, it's not a life or death matter.
With hotel schemes you can pretty much value the points you get, and the discount and other things like cashback/E-store you might get with say hotels.com. But then similar arguments exist around the 'soft' benefits. If I book with Hilton and use their scheme will I get a better room than a 3rd party booking, often yes I feel, so what value on that. If it's a week in Florida the lake view compared to the car park view is significant, if it's an overnight at the airport who cares. Do I value free breakfast, will it make me eat more than I normally would when i shouldn't do that, am I better without it?
I feel I should apologise in advance for this rather rambling excuse for a view on loyalty schemes. I think what I'm trying to say is valuing a loyalty scheme is not so simple, and ultimately much of it is emotion despite what many would like to think.