Canada: Air Miles, a group of loyalty programmes available in Canada, the Netherlands and the Middle East, has announced a partnership for vacation rentals and hotels with Expedia Group.
After recently launching its own travel booking platform, Air Miles offers travellers access to Expedia Group’s supply of 700,000 hotels and vacation rentals, through both standalone lodging and package bookings.
Air Miles’ collectors, of which there are ten million alone in Canada, are now able to earn on the cash portion of their travel bookings, and redeem them for future rewards including travel, merchandise or cash rewards.
Earlier this year in March, it was announced that the Bank of Montreal [BMO] had signed a deal to acquire the Air Miles reward programme from management consulting company LoyaltyOne Co.
Shawn Stewart, president, AIR MILES Reward Programme, said: “As we continue to innovate and evolve the AIR MILES Reward Program, providing the best value to our collectors remains our main focus. By partnering with Expedia Group as strategic lodging supplier for our new travel platform, we are able to provide extensive accommodation options to our collectors beyond what we already offer; being one of the most trusted names in the travel industry, it was a clear move for us.”
Alfonso Paredes, senior vice president of private label solutions at Expedia, said: “This strategic lodging partnership between Expedia Group and AIR MILES taps into the natural evolution of loyalty programmes, which addresses consumers’ desires to have flexibility and choice in their loyalty offerings. We have already seen strong booking interest during our soft launch and look forward to building more momentum as we bring advantageous accommodation offerings to AIR MILES collectors.”
According to Expedia Group research, 85 per cent of leisure travellers are interested in using travel rewards throughout their trips over the next 12 months.
At the same time, 77 per cent of consumers as part of Expedia Group’s research were reported to want to apply travel rewards to any individual element of their trip, such as their flight or lodging, regardless of which brand it involves.
