Articles tagged “Points.com”

Travel brands have a unique opportunity to realize greater potential from their loyalty programs. Through creative merchandising that allows travelers to earn points and miles in different ways, they can grow ancillary revenue, build more meaningful customer relationships, and increase lifetime value.

In Skift's top stories this week, Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali writes about the blending of work, travel, and personal lives, Ghana's decision to use celebrities to promote tourism emerges as problematic, and the labor shortage in hospitality enhances the need for robots in hotels.

PlusGrade and Points.com deal with some of the same partners, and they can now approach them with a collaborative pitch.

Points.com is still too dependent on its mainstay business of loyalty currency swaps for just a few major travel suppliers that are primarily in the U.S. Hopefully, its new cross-marketing deal with Amadeus will help.

This deal is noteworthy because it represents a recent industry shift in the gravity of airline sales efforts. Work that used to happen on computers that interact mainly with travel agencies is now shifting toward computers that mainly power an airline's brand.com site and other direct sales channels.

Priceline showed up with a new brand and better partner access last week, which should please those who use the Points International network.

New functionality added by Points International grants users of that network access to the Priceline library of hotels. That's great for frequent flyers — especially those with miles to burn.

Points is trying to diversify beyond being the world's largest reseller of airlines and hotels points. But this loyalty tech company needs a little more mojo if it wants to produce truly game-changing products.