Virgin America Elevates The Frequent Flyer Concept
by David Rosen | Senior Vice President
OK, I am a frequent flyer junkie. Since college when I traversed the country to get to school and every subsequent job, I have been that guy. I am no longer ashamed about my obsession — rather feel cleansed of my guilt since I’ve admitted this to myself, family, friends and co-workers.
[note to self, one day do a blog entry on some of my bizarre FFP obsessive, compulsive behaviors.]
Yesterday Virgin America (by partnering with Loyalty Lab) launched to the public the major missing piece of their frequent flyer program, Elevate – the ability to redeem the points that guests have earned by flying the airline. Why the wait – it has been over a year since the airline launched. The answer is Virgin America (VX in airline geek code) has what is assuredly the most innovative and consumer-friendly loyalty program in the airline space.
If you read the business travel columnists in the NY Times and WSJ, you know that the legacy carriers’ programs are regularly skewered for their:
- Increasing difficulty of finding reward-eligible seats
- Brutal black-out periods
- Non-alignment of customer revenue with miles/points earned
- Declining value per mile
Virgin America rejected the basic assumptions of their competition with a program that:
- Ties earning to revenue. Not miles, but points. The more you pay, the more you earn
- Makes every seat available for redemption on every flight
- Guests can easily and seamlessly toggle between points and dollars within the same session
Essentially, points become a currency that guests can use as they choose. If flights are more expensive in dollars, they’ll likely be more expensive in points. This keeps the economics of the program — both earning and burning — squarely aligned with VX profitability and fairer and more logical for Virgin’s guests.
There’s a lot more behind the scenes. The technology employed to deliver both what is presented to Virgin’s guests and the tools provided to VX’s loyalty marketers pushed Loyalty Lab’s technology team to new heights of creativity, design, implementation and quality.
We congratulate the Virgin America and Loyalty Lab teams for a powerful partnership and great times to come.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:08 am
To all our friends at Loyalty Lab – Congratulations to everyone at Virgin America and to you for implementing the redemption portion of Elevate. When we first started working with Virgin America in April of 2007, even before they had permission to fly, to conceive and design the Elevtate program, we knew it would be groundbreaking. We were pleased that, with our help, Virgin chose Loyalty Lab to help bring our vision into the marketplace.
Richard Metzner
Partner
Metzner Schneider Associates, Inc.