Program Profile: Qatar Airways Privilege Club

By Paul Lacey, Senior Manager, Loyalty, Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways Privilege Club was launched in 2000 and has grown significantly in the last seven years both in terms of membership and product offering.

The programme was re-launched in January 2007 with a new brand and benefits, as well as a new qualification currency – Qpoints - that aims to align tier membership more closely with revenue contribution.

The challenge for Privilege Club is to keep pace with the significant growth and product innovation of Qatar Airways and our focus is to do just that, on a variety of fronts.

Innovation

Product innovation is critical to our success as a loyalty programme and introducing Privilege Club enrolment kiosks at Doha International Airport is the first step on that journey. These kiosks, which we now have in all our lounges in Doha, have been very successful in our acquisition efforts as well as providing our passengers with instant enrolment into the programme, their membership card immediately produced and, as result, miles accredited to their account once they step onto the aircraft.

Privilege Club Kiosk	2007 FFP Innovation Gold Winner

Accrual and Redemption Network

We have also been focusing on expanding the choice of partners – adding new travel-related partners to provide our members with opportunities to earn miles at every step of their travel experience, as well as adding financial partners in some of our key markets. We now have a mix of co-brand and other financial partnerships with banks in seven countries complemented by regional partnerships, with more to come.

We also, like most programmes, need to provide greater opportunities to burn miles. It is all very well expanding 3rd party relationships and increasing mileage sales, but unless we open the valve at the bottom and provide greater redemption opportunities, there will be member dissatisfaction. So we continue to look at new award opportunities – expanding our partnerships with other airlines to provide a global network on which to redeem and introducing non-air awards, including Eurostar, to provide locally relevant redemption opportunities for members.

On the recognition front, we adjusted some of our membership benefits to ensure relevance to our different member segments. Providing our Gold members with last seat availability for awards, providing greater lounge access for family and companions of our Gold and Silver members and the opening of dedicated Gold and Silver Lounges in Doha means that we are adapting to the ever changing needs and demands of our members.

We had some strong programme features that we continue to build on – a very generous family programme, allowing main members the ability to pool miles in their account based on their membership level, awards starting from as low as 6,000 miles for a round trip journey and generous accrual rates are some of the unique features of Privilege Club.

By providing our members with increased and relevant mileage earning opportunities, more avenues to redeem their miles and ongoing and relevant recognition and communication, we will hopefully cement that emotional bond between our members and the programme. Once that is established then the opportunity to earn miles results in stimulating irrational behaviour from our membership base - using a co-branded credit card to pay for a pint of milk, driving an extra mile to fill up at a petrol station where they can earn miles, or generating incremental revenue and greater share of wallet for Qatar Airways by taking that extra First Class flight to retain or achieve status.

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