Why is British Airways trashing the value of Avios in its own emails?

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• memesweeper says:

  31 Dec31 December 13:41

  HfP say ”that 1p+ is relatively easily achievable”

  … it is under fairly specific circumstances: eg, you fly in club in Europe, or you are a couple with companion voucher and a long haul redemption in WTP, or if you would otherwise be travelling with a flex or semi-flex ticket, or if you book a super-popular route at midnight on the night the seats are released. The vast majority of leisure travellers book in economy, and book the cheapest, non-refundable tickets. There is no route to 1p value in Avios for these people at all.

  Having said that 0.65p off at ebay/Argos/Sainsbury’s is achievable for anyone, and even that’s better than these headline examples.

  Of course, this campaign might be driven by someone who does not work in marketing demanding that a push is made for more Cash + Avios bookings, as these bookings represent best the margin for BA. Which might explain why the marketing team are actively drawing attention to what must be one of the worst redemption values available.

  • cinereus says:

    31 Dec31 December 16:35

    Exactly. For a huge number of people they would never pay cash for these tickets so the point is moot. For a huge swathe of people, Avios are worth 0.66p and that’s the end of it.

    Also 18,500 + £1 is probably the most appealing thing for this group of people. They can easily hit the SUB and get a couple of free flights. Much better than trying to get a nominal 1p value out of Avios when you can pay cash for economy for much much less and spend the Avios at Ebay.

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      31 Dec31 December 17:03

      Last minute short haul bookings can be worth it on Avios.
      On the fun side I remembered in 2016 sitting in London with friends on 30 Dec wondering what to do for New Year. We ended up using Avios to fly EDI-LCY when cash prices were high. I’ve used it many other times for impulse trips since then

      On the practical side, my dad has been very ill this year and one time when I found out he was in hospital I managed to get BLQ-LHR-NCL a few hours before I was due to fly. Cash prices were high, so BA wouldn’t necessarily get my money, I d have considered other options if Avios wasn’t available.

• The Savage Squirrel says:

  31 Dec31 December 15:40

  Not sure this counts as such bad marketing.
  0.5p looks bad to us as we are anchored to our 1p+ of Avios value.

  Many of the general public are not anchored to this value, or any value. They don’t know whether 0.5p is good or terrible so you’re not trashing a value, you’re establishing one. If you can encourage them to redeem for low return-on-avios redemptions rather than high then surely that’s good marketing – you’re encouraging people to make transactions that increase your profitability by paying more for less in return by making it seem attractive or desirable – which is the whole purpose of commercial advertising….

  • memesweeper says:

    31 Dec31 December 16:29

    “They don’t know whether 0.5p is good or terrible”

    If they are deciding which rewarding Amex to take out the BA ones suddenly all look terrible if you think you’re getting 0.45p each. This is not hard maths to do, and even relatively unsavvy consumers will do this calculation.

    Rob is right: it’s unwise to promote a 0.45p valuation to your customers whilst selling the same Avios to finance companies for much more.

    • DaveJ says:

      31 Dec31 December 18:09

      “If they are deciding which rewarding Amex to take out”

      I’m not sure they do. They just think that spending £10k/£20k will get them a free flight.

      Even The Times had an article a few months ago saying that you get a free flight with a 2-4-1 voucher.

• Andy says:

  31 Dec31 December 16:34

  Maybe it’s poor marketing on BA’s part, although I also do wonder what percentage of people who have some Avios approach spending them differently to the per point value mindset.

  I absolutely understand the logic and benefit of maximising points usage, but even with that knowledge, I tend to still to begin my year with a starting point of “I’m likely to want a trip to the US next year, and have a 2 for 1 voucher to use up by November, how can I use up points to use get the routes I want on these long distance routes” – and then spending what I have available (for a good or bad rate) rather than optimising a per penny cost. The logic being the points could expire, I have to ensure I align my trip with my partners holiday, I don’t know how much my travel might vary (I never expect to take more than a few BA flights a year as I’m not near a BA airport) and I will only likely ever spend Avios on flights… so I tend to approach it like a bonus flight/upgrade experience I wouldn’t have had anyway.

  Anecdotally, many of the people I’ve ever spoken to who have a BA credit card and a a chunk of points building up have tended to be self-educated and even less clued up on the use of them than me (often struggling to figure out how to spend them), which I find interesting. I wonder if this type of “here’s a way to use them” just appeals to a chunk of the audience that works a bit more like this?

• Kevin says:

  31 Dec31 December 17:45

  “Pick 3 cities in America, one east coast, one west coast and one somewhere else, and throw in Dubai too. People love Dubai these days. Search a few random dates on BA.com and copy and paste any old prices in GBP and Avios. Then stick it in an email. Doesn’t matter what it says, it’ll tick a box for Xmas/New Year marketing promo.” – Instructions given to BA work experience students this week!

• bafan says:

  31 Dec31 December 19:33

  I flew SJO-MAD two weeks ago for 40k+ avios and $138 in taxes in Business. Cash ticket was about $4k. I get that not that many people need a one way ticket but I got a cheap flight out of the US…insane value for me. Nearly 5p per avios.

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