Virgin's Accelerate Program?
 

Can anyone give me a rundown on the Virgin 'Accelerate' program and its benefits?

Essentially once you join and spend over $20k a year, you start to receive discount benefits. There are sometimes promotional discounts, usually for business class bookings. Right now they are running 30% off certain domestic business class bookings.

I am a member and find it pretty useless. Their website portal is a joke, and makes bookings very difficult. Even though I struggled through it, I get monthly statements showing my spend, and they show all zeroes. So Accelerate doesn't even recognize what I have been doing.

CP, thanks for the info. I am hoping the program is not just an attempt to offer us 'Virgin Visa' credit cards and other supposedly helpful business products and the like.

But, to clarify, the discount benefits for members only get offered after a 'minimum spend' of $20k?

Virgin does discount sales / specials on a regular basis for all-and-sundry, regardless of their membership in any programs. I'm still trying to figure out what all the fuss is about, if anything, and Virgin seems to ask a lot of questions if you wish to join:


"Hi,

Our Account setup team have requested the following information to support your accelerate application:

• Confirm the nature of your business.
• Confirm the address of your business
• Is the business listed in any business directories

Please note that your application is on hold until we receive this information, once we receive this we can continue processing the application. If this information is not received within 7 days, your application may be withdrawn.

Kind Regards,

accelerate Team"

Yes, it is a real pain to join. And not many benefits unless you spend a lot.

There is a guaranteed discount after you spend 20k. But there are occasional discounts for anyone in the program. If you buy business class or flexible fares, then you may find it worthwhile. Otherwise, if you spend less than $20k a year, it is totally worthless.

I'm not sure if they are still running it, but there was a promotion where if you spent and flew $2k in flights in the first 2 months (I think), you got two free pilot VA Gold programs. I thought that was worth it, so I waited to apply until I was ready to purchase and fly. But the application process was so long that I ended up having the buy the flights before I was approved anyway. So I missed out on that too.

Bottom line..the most incompetently pathetic booking interface of any airline I ever came across in decades of travel as a business owner.

On the positive side...you do get access to account executives who may be able to troubleshoot the issues that arise from the sometimes amateur environment of VA. About to hit them up for 10,000s missing points from online mall purchases since their follow up process has resulted in zilch.

For goodness sake why can't these dolts get the basics right?!

Stuck between a rock and a hard place - QF overpriced, arrogant, and unethical: VA still dithering around with budget systems...so glad I don't travel so much domestically any more...

I did use this to get the Pilot VA gold - and it worked out for me. Was able to parlay this into VA Plat for a year (grinding through a lot of domestic flying plus some family pooling).

I'd agree with you that Accelerate was difficult to use - but noticed recently it had offered some specific discounts (15%?) which I was interested in and didn't require a $20K spend either.

We have a small team of people in the consulting group I work with and we might be able to get more discounts if we all booked through Accelerate but have to figure out an easy way to do it - the main VA website is still the simplest way to book something!

You can book through the regular VA website and enter your ABN during booking. This will post the flights to your Accelerate account. You won't qualify for any discounts for that particular flight, but if you just want to make things easier, it works.

You might, but then again, you might not!

The last couple of times I have checked the fare for a domestic business class purchase on VA through the Acccelerate Portal, I have found equal or better promo rates on the regular website!

I also want to be able to cancel flights to refund as cash - not credit bank. VA makes you ring up to do this, which is a pain....

Incidentally, IIRC, the QF business system recorded expenditure, but not cancellations of some flights, so was way over estimating annual spend on my company account!

In a small business it may or may be better to stay light on your feet and go for best fare on the day, promos, double points and credit offers, etc....it's not easy do to the maths committing too either QF or VA!

Thanks CPM, I didn't think of that (and should have). I really should also put the time aside to work out how to actually drive the accelerate site..