FLYING IN THEIR OWN FORMATION

There aren’t many frequent flyer programs in which the top redemption option is to stay on a Caribbean island belonging to the man who owns the airline. But then, not many travelers will fly often enough to collect a visit to Richard Branson’s Necker Island, even though Virgin Atlantic Airways does try to be generous with the miles it gives participants in its Freeway scheme.

The character of the loyalty rewards in the program attempt to reflect the unique culture of the Virgin Group, which in itself reflects the founder’s passions. The same vision that has seen a record company grow into an international travel operator means its customers can go hot-air ballooning as a perk-if they have sufficient points.

This sense of difference should be evident right from enrollment. “Everybody gets a proper card-a lot of airlines just send you a number on a piece of paper. Because of what Virgin is all about, everybody gets a full welcome pack with a swipe card,” explains Matthew Hey, database manager. Nearly a million customers have signed up since the plan was launched in 1992, although not all are active flyers.

The program relies on the database infrastructure to marry customers with their travel details. Instead of using the swipe card at check-in-“It has the potential to be used that way, but we don’t use it,” explains Hey-members give their Freeway number when they book a ticket. The system recognizes the number on that record and automatically calculates how many miles they are entitled to. If customers forget, they can call a customer support line and have them registered retroactively.

Like all such schemes, there are tiers of membership. Freeway is the vanilla option for the majority of customers, who will get a quarterly statement of their points. More frequent travelers move up to the Flying Club, which has bronze, silver and gold options. These offer all the usual privileges, such as access to lounges and bars in airports.

In addition, “If you are a Flying Club Gold member, there is a separate help line and if you are flying with Virgin, we guarantee that we will get you on that flight, even if it’s full,” says Hey. Having worked in financial services, he is familiar with the way most companies exploit their database for sales purposes, and is pleased that Virgin resists the same temptation.

“We don’t want to follow the approach that is dominant in direct marketing. Virgin is an organization that reacts to customer needs very quickly, so it is very important that the database can support that. It’s a challenge in my job because the objectives are constantly shifting, trying to produce different things from the database every day,” says Hey.

His latest challenge is to take Freeway onto the Internet, offering an enhanced customer service. Hey is charged with overseeing this project and has been researching the options. The American Airlines site comes closest to what he hopes to achieve, although he wants to improve on the 200-group segmentation it has undertaken.

One obstacle that has come up is how to present the site in Japanese for customers there. “A few sites do it, such as Cathay Pacific, which is in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and English. The one thing we can’t find a way to do is get customer details up in Japanese, because the database is written in English,” says Hey.

For a company that has taken on the global might of rival airline British Airways and won (over departure slots for transatlantic flights), and whose founder has been willing to risk all on a balloon flight just because he wanted to, it seems unlikely that a technical issue of this sort will get in the way. Certainly the commitment to pleasing customers, but doing things its own way, is likely to see Virgin Atlantic’s Web site taking off soon.

The opportunities for fellow travel group company Virgin Trains to follow suit are much more limited. When the formerly state-owned British Railways was privatized two years ago, Virgin won two franchises that now operate under the single brand. The company immediately tried to do what it could by enrolling everybody traveling on the first day of its operation into a First Day Club.

Up to 40,000 customers have since received occasional direct mail. But Virgin Trains head of sales Sarah Keogh notes, “We can’t do direct marketing because there is no point-of-sale data.” Despite carrying 23 million passengers a year, no personal data is captured by the various ticketing agencies and station travel shops. All the rail operating companies are now working together on a system to allow them to capture this data, but it will not be in place until the year 2000. Definitely one to watch.