Zurich, Switzerland – Loylogic, a leading reward solutions provider to loyalty programs worldwide, made an online survey along with the 2008 Freddie Award voting. More than 9,000 members from 60 frequent flyer programs worldwide participated and one message came through strongly: 94% of frequent flyers want a flexible miles-plus-cash payment option when redeeming rewards.
The survey also revealed other interesting facts and trends of the frequent flyer and credit card industry. Only about 30% of the participants feel that the value of their miles has increased over the past three years. As a consequence, 40% of the frequent flyers consider switching from their airline co-branded credit card to a credit card program – about every fifth voter has already done so.
Another surprising finding: more then 50% of all frequent flyers consider non-flight rewards a valid alternative to flight rewards and – even more astonishing – one out of six considers non-flight rewards more important than flight rewards. No doubt, this trend might heavily impact frequent flyer programs over the next years. While frequent flyers clearly want new reward options, they are not ready to swap their hard-earned miles for any low value offer. One out of two frequent flyers seeks “Great value” when redeeming miles for non-flight rewards.
Hence, increasing the tangible value of miles will be one of the key challenges that frequent flyer programs will have to resolve in future.
