Originally Posted by
adsho43
The new tier would need to offer some serious benefits to make it worth achieving. If someone is the type of customer earning 3000+ SPs a year then it's highly likely that loyalty and pricing is a secondary consideration if they have the option to fly with whoever offers a quality product - at least for international travel anyway, although extremely difficult to achieve this from a majority domestic flying where competition is non-existent. Why chase AirNZ elite plus (or whatever it will be called) when NZ's offering, even with new the cabins, is just so inferior to the international competition.
Yeah it is interesting - obviously they have a lot more data on this than we have. My personal example is as you describe: I'll hit 4000SP this year but not from choice. I have to fly to SIN regularly and Air NZ by far has better schedules for not losing business hours to flying time than SQ, so I choose to fly NZ solely because they offer a late night AKL departure getting in before 7am and then departs SIN 7pm getting in AKL early morning the next day. So I'd still choose them whether I make Elite Plus or not (I'm only 2000SP on NZ metal). If you mix destinations up though that could be a different story...or again if for example JFK was a regular destination then I'd be much more likely to shift to QF for both loyalty program and better seats and lounges at both ends.