‘As clear as mud’: Did Qantas land the plane in major PR move? We ask the experts
This week, Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson announced “one of the biggest expansions we’ve made to the Frequent Flyer program in its 35-year history,” namely, opening up 20 million new flight reward seats, while charging loyal customers more points for the privilege of redeeming them.
“The Qantas Frequent Flyer program is an integral part of Qantas and has always been about recognising our customers for their loyalty,” Hudson said.
“We’ve spent a lot of time listening to members about how we can better reward them.”
People’s expectations for change at Qantas are misplaced.
Vanessa has spent almost 30 years with Qantas and last 7 years a “seat at the table”. While Joyce may have been the face she has been involved in every decision.
Same announcements with a different messenger. Unfair to expect anything other than same same from the PR team
Announcement is gobbledygook & accompanied by business articles that say the FF program will deliver more profit to Qantas. How is that good for customers….even if they could understand what the changes were about?
Fix the delays. Fix the meals. Fix customer support. Engage your workforce and fix the service. Start caring about the product (flying) and I’ll start caring about the brand again.
A Newspaper takeover and countless articles that fail to inspire anyone to choose Qantas – the big news… you can redeem points that you have earnt! this is baseline expectation – not value adding.
The Qantas loyalty scheme is such an amazing success for Qantas.
But it keeps flight prices high in Australia.
Example: Aussie execs flying to Singapore the last couple of years have paid more to go Qantas to get their points even though Singapore Airlines is cheaper, has more and better flight times, has bigger seats, better service and wifi.
The points are virtually worthless but behaviourally they are priceless.
The announcement has excellent coverage, but as soon as I heard ‘overseas only’ and then ‘book early’ – the 20 million seats meant zero to me.
This was being worked on for at least 3 years, addressing key frustrations around availability. They had to do something. Not bad. Whokilledthespiritofaustralia.com