Why I think British Airways should reform the Gold Priority Reward

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• Silverbird says:

  28 Oct28 October 11:14

  There isn’t the commercial inclination on BA’s part to impliment this, and everything BA does is based on commercial improvement (which they do excel at as a business). The revenue generation on a flight is maximised continiously and in the first instance if there isn’t any Avios seats available it’s because they know at that moment in time they can generate more in commercial revenue rather than redemption. If the flight is particularly busy (or over peak periods/routes) and only the highest commercial fare classes are available in Economy for example (Y,B,H) which could be costed in the £K’s range, the last thing they would like to do is offer the Gold Priority Reward, and under this idea, will be further diluted from a revenue perspective if the pax is able to utilise an Amex voucher, and the business ultimately misses out on the commercial fare that seat could have brought in.
  There is cost benefit to the Exec member under the current proposition if for example only the higest fare classes are left available, but the per avios cost would need to be worked out for the flight in question on the day the member is wishing to redeem to determine if it is cheaper than the fare. In BA’s eyes this is a proposition to be listed as a benefit (to pad-out the Gold benefit list) but to only be utilised in minimal circumstances, thus maintaining the balance of revenue generation vs listed benefit.

  As other users have also commented it does massively detract the GGL joker proposition (which is already villified by the Revenue Management team at BA).
  Finally the argument around increasing the Gold member sentiment is not something that is a commercial priority to BA, either during Covid-times, or under normal circumstances due to the network monopoly ex-UK.

  • ChrisBCN says:

    28 Oct28 October 13:05

    Absolutely correct!

  • Ken says:

    28 Oct28 October 16:57

    +1

    It drives redemptions on seats easiest to sell at high price.
    Would it drive people to use BA more ? Why would it when Gold is easy to come by using Oneworld airlines.

• e14 says:

  28 Oct28 October 12:58

  At least allow LSAGs on BACF (the hold co for the London City Fleet), if you want a real benefit, rather than one for certain folks that can’t plan / plan around school holidays.

• Mike says:

  28 Oct28 October 17:02

  “Please revise GPR in a way that enriches me personally” Sorry Rob….this is for the fairies, like free domestic on RFS.

  BAEC is created as a one way street, to fill BA’s pockets with the con that the Member is the winner.

  • Rob says:

    28 Oct28 October 17:59

    Are we talking about the same scheme which lets you get Silver via one £1000 Qatar Airways return Business Class flight to Asia, which then lets you use the lounge, fast track security, priority boarding and have free seat selection on every £29 economy ticket you buy for the next 2 years? Just checking.

    • Doug M says:

      28 Oct28 October 21:54

      In normal times you need 600 so the 560 from this is not getting you silver. Then there’s the 4 x BA flights too, no?

• Matt says:

  28 Oct28 October 17:46

  The bigger issue currently got GPR is that you can now be quoted ridiculous costs, because they go with the max avios+£1 to double for this. It was possible to get them to go off the old pricing, but who knows how long that will list. Strangely that option isn’t there for a 241.

  The new, low cash high avios pricing would be the death of GPR as a useful idea for short haul

  • Rob says:

    28 Oct28 October 17:57

    I deliberately kept this out of the article because it really isn’t clear what is meant to happen here.

    • Matt says:

      28 Oct28 October 18:10

      No, they didn’t seem to have much of a clue when I phoned up a while back.

• Littlefish says:

  28 Oct28 October 17:54

  This idea has some merit but as it stands is likely too niche and not super-attractive to BAEC and BA.
  However, I could see the core idea flying as an annual promotion. Revenue flights in J struggle during August to certain more business-heavy destinations (IAH, JNB, etc) and I could see a promo to offer up GPR + 2f1 on selected long-haul routes. Limited to one per BAEC Household. Limited to restricted routes/dates.
  Whether AUH or DXB would fit the profile for Rob and family is another question.

  One extra wrinkle that might work for BAEC/BA would be running it as a promo takes away the need to hard-wire this to Golds and the GPR. It could simply be a BAEC:AMEX 2f1 double reward miles promo to Golds & Silvers (or even Bronzes too).

• Mike P says:

  28 Oct28 October 23:02

  Huge potential devaluation of GGL were this to happen.

• ECR says:

  29 Oct29 October 13:40

  I don’t think there is much in this for BA as it effectively would allow a BA Amex and Gold Card Holder to get the equivalent of a standard price avios flight on any flight whether there was avios availability or not. Flights without avios availability are presumably ones which they think they can sell the seats for cash, often at a very high price. Why would they want to give those up for avios?

  They probably don’t want to completely remove Gold Priorty Rewards but they have already reduced the value of them by applying them at the newish £1 RFS rates by default. (Rates for which the avios required have already increased since it was first introduced). I think if you complain you can still get the equivalent of the old RFS rate, but I imagine this option will be removed at some point.

  The only circumstances where I can see where it might be even vaguely worthwhile for BA to introduce what was suggested in the article would be if GPRs were restricted to Economy flights only, and then only at the lowest RFS rate (i.e. £1 short haul, £100/£150 etc long haul).

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