A new loyalty program is coming soon for Allegiant Airlines. The ultra low cost carrier wants to enhance and expand its appeal to repeat customers, while also delivering a simple and relatable offering, dubbed “Allways Rewards.”
Allways Reward built off the success of our credit card’s simple point earning and point redemption model, and also draws inspiration from the most effective programs engaged with by our customers in all aspects of their life that includes Apple Card, Amazon Prime and Target Circle rewards, just to name a few.
– Scott DeAngelo – Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
The name alludes to the company’s intentions that members have nearly unlimited options for redeeming points. Chief Marketing Officer Scott DeAngelo sees the program extending well beyond the carrier’s core mission of promoting repeat purchases. Allways Rewards hopes to also “stimulate larger transaction sizes by motivating purchases across all the leisure travel products offered at Allegiant.com.”
The new Allways Rewards will enable points earning for any Allegiant-related transaction, of course. But the company also intends for it to expand partnerships as it “enables us to reach new customers and introduce the Allegiant brand via co-marketing through these partner relationships.”
The newest of those partnerships is with Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Others are expected in short order.
Can (or should??) revenue-based loyalty be more than transactional?
Core to the new Allways Rewards program is its revenue-based approach to both earning and redeeming points. As DeAngelo explained in the company’s recent earnings call, “Just give them the “Allegiant money” (well we don’t call it that but that’s in effect what it is), and let them spend it as they see fit.”
The earn and burn options will not be limited to just flights. Anything for sale on the Allegiant website will be fair game, This includes the eventual plans to offer concert tickets or any other new partners that come along.
DeAngelo also says that Allegiant studied the many legacy programs and discovered that its passengers found them less than satisfying:
About 30 to 40% of our customers are members of top programs like Skymiles, Rapid Rewards, or AAdvantage. About 90% of them said they didn’t benefit from those programs, they never flew enough to earn any kind of status, certainly not enough to get a free trip anywhere. Hence why we chose … points that are a bank currency. You use them anytime you want for anything you can buy at Allegiant.com.
Key to the Allegiant Allways Rewards program proposition is a consistent and understood valuation of the points. DeAngelo included himself in the legacy program complaints of disliking “the moving around [of reward prices]… On some days it is 20,000 [points], some days it is that’s 60,000 miles.”
Of course, some of that variation in pricing is tied to the underlying fare of the seat being redeemed. And Allegiant certainly has variable fares, so one can expect that reward rates for a seat will similarly vary under the Allways Rewards program. A key differentiator is that Allegiant appears to be offering partial redemption, similar to Norwegian Rewards.
Allowing members to redeem any number of points delivers huge flexibility for the program. DeAngelo believes that gives the new program a leg up with Millennial and Gen Z customers, the largest and fastest growing age groups for the carrier.
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