Originally Posted by
lost_in_translation
You are making exactly the same mistake McKinsey and BA management appear to have made in looking at everything through a US lens and failing to understand how the UK / European market is completely different (unless you are deliberately suggesting BA’s strategy should be to abandon all the high spending UK-based customers who despite spending $10s of Ks per year with BA will still never earn enough Avios to make a dynamic redemption in First since they cannot obtain a telephone number digit balance just through credit cards).
EK and AF haven’t restricted F for ‘gamification’, they’ve restricted F to get US credit card redeemers of limited commercial value out of F!
You realize UAE residents have EK credit cards with large bonuses too right? EK Skywards has the following breakdown:
3.7 million members in the United Kingdom, 3 million in the United States, 2.2 million in the United Arab Emirates, 2.1 million in Australia and 2.1 million in India....with around 30 million members worldwide). So yes, achieving tiers to unlock new rewards (such as F redemptions) is the pure definition of consumers being gamified in a loyalty program. It is not due to US credit card holders.
In addition, some of the biggest customers of airlines, are the airline mile purchasers, such as credit cards/merchants/retailers. People should listen to the podcast with
EKs Skyward Director and how he changed Skywards for the top 3% of premium flyers early on, to the current loyalty program that is for everyone globally. BA is having its own metaphorsis of where they want BAC to become (opposite pendulum of EK's program in my opinion). BAC is only in its infancy and will change over time; as it should, to perfect their program, from their perspective.
As for high spenders, I don't think they really care about redemptions as much, since they purchase F/J anyways and time is more valuable than to figure out redemptions.
Regardless, McK has all of this data to make a decision with BA of where they want their new BAC program to become.
Originally Posted by
percysmith
How would making known F awards are elite-only be conducive to gamification? We aren't in a hurry to get Flying Blue points here, unless we can figure out how to match our way into AFKL Plat as well.
Having elite tier criteria to redeem F tickets makes people achieve a status that they may not normally have, in order to redeem the aspirational award. Just look at the endless amounts of <insert airlines loyalty program tier level>, is it worth it threads. Add in an aspirational award, then it becomes worth it, right?
AF/KLM/DL flyers are at the mature end of the loyalty programs, where the consumers are programmed to chose FB products, regardless of inflation of redemption/rebate points. Your comment indicates exactly where BAC needs to be in the future; to the point where flyers chose BA for the product/schedule, and don't care about the points as much. Isn't that the ultimate goal of any loyalty/rebate program?
McK already put out data that the loyalty programs in a sense don't matter as much for the newer generations of consumers, and personalized/customized options are much more important; as well as bundled travel packages.