Transforming an Airline Loyalty Program with Flexible Hotel Redemption Options
Client:
*Confidential* Global Flag Carrier Airline
Challenge:
Airline loyalty programs are vital to the success or failure of an airline’s overall business and are a key driver of customer demand and retention. This major global airline engaged Travel Again Advisory to advise on the relaunch of its loyalty program, with a focus on modernizing the user experience, adding new partner content, and driving increased booking activity and redemption of miles stored by customers over time.
The engagement’s specific focus was on enabling customers to redeem miles for hotel bookings using points, a combination of points and cash, or fully cash-based transactions. The project required a comprehensive, end-to-end review of technology, economics, partnerships, and user experience to ensure outcomes that would be both customer-friendly and profitable for the airline and its hotel partners.
Notably, this project was initiated and executed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a time when most capital investments were frozen. It was one of the few strategic initiatives maintained during one of the most financially challenging periods in modern travel history.
Our Approach:
Travel Again Advisory applied a combination of creativity, strategic insight, and financial discipline to deliver a program transformation designed for long-term loyalty success.
End-to-End Program Strategy and Design:
We worked closely with internal teams across loyalty, digital, IT, partnerships, and finance to develop a comprehensive redesign strategy. This included a complete reimagining of the loyalty booking interface and back-end architecture needed to support new redemption pathways.
User Experience Innovation:
We guided the user interface redesign to ensure a seamless, intuitive experience that clearly communicated redemption value, flexible payment options, and real-time inventory availability which are all key to driving engagement and satisfaction.
Partner Content and Integration:
Leveraging our extensive relationships in the travel and hospitality space, we facilitated the onboarding of new hotel partners and developed a scalable model for integrating third-party content into the loyalty platform. We ensured that both fixed-point and dynamically priced redemption options were available to support customer choice and margin protection.
Economic Modeling and Operational Planning:
To ensure commercial success, we created detailed economic models to evaluate margin performance across booking types. This enabled the client to establish pricing guidelines and partner terms that would maximize revenue while offering compelling value to loyalty members.
The Results:
The engagement delivered meaningful results, even amid a global crisis:
- Program Relaunched: New loyalty platform launched on time after nearly two years of development.
- Increased Redemption Activity: Customers quickly embraced the new hotel redemption functionality, leading to higher engagement and repeat bookings.
- Resilient During Crisis: The loyalty program was one of the few capital projects to launch during COVID and became a strategic differentiator during the airline’s recovery.
- Improved Profitability: Redemption options balanced customer value with strong margin contributions across hotel bookings.
- Strengthened Partnerships: New hotel brand relationships were successfully formed with long-term contractual alignment.
Client Impact:
Travel Again Advisory helped launch a next-generation loyalty platform that bridged customer experience, commercial goals, and strategic partner collaboration. By maintaining momentum during a period of extreme financial pressure, the airline positioned itself to emerge stronger and more competitive. The loyalty relaunch not only revitalized customer engagement but also became a critical lever for growth as travel resumed post-pandemic.