Anyone else got this letter from Elal?

Dear Business Plus Member
In accordance with EL AL’s commitment to improving and enhancing our products, a decision has been taken to close the Business Plus Programme.
Please see attached letter for all the information concerning the closure.
Thank you for your loyalty to the programme.
Kind regards,

Anyone have info on this? why has this happened?

Thanks

Can anybody explain what this business plus program is about?

Here is a description to what this program is. It is now being discontinued and was wondering if anyone has a clue as to why.


"EL AL’s new Business Plus program is aimed at small to medium enterprise (SME) businesses in the UK & Ireland. It enables SME’s to manage company business travel, save costs and give you and your colleagues various advantages and benefits when flying EL AL to and from Tel Aviv. It is the most generous travel reward and incentive program on Tel Aviv route.

Your company account will accumulate points AND your employees will earn frequent flyers points on their personal account every time they travel for business on EL AL. Your points can be used for bonus tickets, upgrades to premium classes or even for leisure."

Perhaps Liat could be so kind as to explain to us why this program is being canceled? It seems like it's a program worth having as it is meant to attract business traffic.

Let me check up on that.


Liat Kaplan
Head of Social Media
EL AL

Kol HaKavod to Liat for responding within 17 minutes.
Let's hope that this signals a new dawn of cooperation and appreciation

So as a program, this sounds very similar to BusinessExtraa at American Airlines. The idea behind this is that it should incentivize both the business and the traveler to want to book their travel with El Al The main problem with this program is probably the lack of anyone knowing it existed, and possibly also people who may be double dipping by pretending to be a company and getting both the Business Plus points and the regular Matmid points.

Why does LY insist on using the XXXPlus in its official and sometimes unofficial marketing materials. As UA's program is MileagePlus and their premium economy product is called EconomyPlus, I always cringe when I hear Elyezer Shkedi call the new LY product EconomyPlus.

Hi all,
We found that the Business Plan Program was relevant to a fairly small audience.
As part of EL AL’s commitment our products and services, we're currently checking for alternatives, and we hope to announce an improved program in the future.

Liat Kaplan
Head of Social Media
EL AL

Liat, Thanks for your swift replys.

Not a very convincing reply though for the head of social media. By the time they come up (if they ever do) with an improved program, the so called very small audience will no doubt, by then have joined an alternative loyalty program with another airline and will be difficult if not impossible to lure them back.

Most of your competitors offer a program that is valid in more than a small part of the world. I would suspect that the # of small businesses in the UK with material travel to mostly TLV is small. LY doesn't offer much value to a business that has intra-EU travel or travel to the US in addition to TLV.

UA calls it Economy Plus, not EconomyPlus, and LY calls it Economy Class Plus, not Economy Plus. Stupid name though.

I wonder when Liat will come back to us with an answer to BazBaz1's question which started this whole thread......

Hi Liat,

Are you the head of social media for El Al, or is that Carmit Dotan's role?
http://www.themarker.com/1.1924892

Sounds like Cramit Dotan is Liat's boss though I stand to be corrected...

Anyway, you got to love her reasoning for people complaining about the airline - I would not employ her as a social media manager I can tell you that much...