BA loyalty gets the personal touch

Frequent flyer programme initiatives at British Airways, India's Kingfisher Airlines and Virgin Australia were all recognised in this year's Loyalty Innovation Awards, held during the Airline Business/Global Flight organised Loyalty 2012 event in Berlin.

BA was picked out for its personal recognition initiative, a programme which has seen it develop 50 areas where the airline could improve personalisation by pushing this into the customer experience for its frequent flyers.

"We were getting a lot of feedback from customers that wanted more personalisation," explained British Airways manager of Exec Club communications, Nathalie Masoin, who collected the award on behalf of the airline at the event in Berlin.

One initiative for example has seen the crew delivering personalised messages from the airline to key regular flyers onboard the aircraft via an iPad app. That has increased delivery of personalised messages to customers by 87%.

Based on its regular benchmark satisfaction survey, she points to a 14% increase in satisfaction among its gold members since it rolled out the initiative.

Virgin Australia was recognised by the judges for its Velocity Frequent Flyer programme, which has seen it double engagement levels and the rate of member acquisition since its launch four months ago. The move supports the evolution of the carrier, which has moved from its low-cost carrier Virgin Blue origins, further towards the business market - a sector in which it competes against the highly successful Qantas FFP. "We wanted to focus on the business traveller as we had to unstick members from our competitor," explained Andrew Mason, manager Velocity Airline Partners at Virgin Australia.

Restructuring Indian carrier Kingfisher Airlines received a tonic with an award for its Feel the Force initiative - creating a fantasy Formula 1 product within its King Club scheme to tie with last year's inaugural Indian Grand Prix.

Find out more about the Loyalty 2012 event here - next year's event is in Dubai by the way - or by the #Loyalty2012 tag on Twitter.

Read out recent feature on the challenges facing airlines in maximising the potential of their loyalty programmes, both through the way they structure their loyalty business and in their efforts to engage infrequent travellers.