What features should a GBR loyalty scheme have?

[miklcct]

Club Avanti's distance-based and I think the main effect is that it's much easier to get qualifying journeys if starting from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Carlisle or Preston than from anywhere south of Birmingham. That might be less of an issue with a system based on points rather than full journeys.

The problem of counting journeys is that it can easily be gamed by split ticketing. Distance travelled is resilient to ticketing ploys.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The problem of counting journeys is that it can easily be gamed by split ticketing. Distance travelled is resilient to ticketing ploys.

Given that I think (for Advances) splitting should become the default, i.e. Advances should be issued per vehicle journey, I am inclined to agree that it should be based on something other than a number of journeys.

Personally I'd go on spend. Any business wants to encourage customers to cough up as much as possible, after all, because that's how you make money. And a business traveller buying a First Anytime Return once spends as much as a leisure traveller buying a Standard Off Peak 5 times, so why not give them both about the same. (Manchester-London fare example).

Season tickets perhaps a bit extra given that they provide a reliable base income. You could make it so a monthly season (or consistently hitting a contactless monthly cap on contactless) got you Silver tier automatically, and an annual season Gold tier, effectively replacing the Gold Card.

 

[miklcct]

Personally I'd go on spend. Any business wants to encourage customers to cough up as much as possible, after all, because that's how you make money. And a business traveller buying a First Anytime Return once spends as much as a leisure traveller buying a Standard Off Peak 5 times, so why not give them both about the same. (Manchester-London fare example).

Any loyalty schemes which base its benefits on spend will never attract my custom, as the benefit-price ratio is constant.

Loyalty schemes which base its benefits on something other than price can result in bargain-hunting, for example, "mileage runs" on air loyalty programmes. The effect is that it induces travel which would not be taken otherwise, but a price-based scheme will not do so. On railway terms, I think that the benefit for someone buying an Advance Single priced at £5 or an Advance Single priced at £30 for the same journey should be exactly the same, as the product is the same. Of course we still want to give a higher offering for premium products, so I propose the points for First Class travel is 2x the Standard Class travel.

 

[A S Leib]

The problem of counting journeys is that it can easily be gamed by split ticketing.

The Avanti case gets around it by limiting qualifying journeys to two per day*, so splitting a Lancaster to London day trip at Crewe wouldn't count as four journeys.

*I don't know if it's possible to exceed that limit by buying tickets for multiple people.

 

[miklcct]

The Avanti case gets around it by limiting qualifying journeys to two per day*, so splitting a Lancaster to London day trip at Crewe wouldn't count as four journeys.

*I don't know if it's possible to exceed that limit by buying tickets for multiple people.

So it disincentivise day trippers (especially those making triangular journeys) compared to those staying overnight at their destinations.