Flight buyer, not traveller - rewards?

[lobo76]

Hey all,

I run a small hobby business that involves bringing over different people from overseas and flying them around Australia (usually BNE-SYD-MEL, but sometimes also to PER). Probably talking about 30-40 saver flights a year. I pay for the flights and I often accompany on some legs but only 5-10 legs where I actually travel. The people I'm buying the flights from are not Velocity members nor are they partner airline members.

My question is this: Are there any benefits I can get as the buyer of the flights? I'd specifically be most interested in the SC's

 

[mella2007]

As a business you need to join up to their Accelerate program which depending on what your yearly spend is, will give you flight credit. It will also give you two comp Gold cards however you must make spend each year to maintain.

 

[lobo76]

As a business you need to join up to their Accelerate program which depending on what your yearly spend is, will give you flight credit. It will also give you two comp Gold cards however you must make spend each year to maintain.

Looks great but I don't think I'd mee the spend criteria:

Virgin Australia accelerate is our air travel program for companies with a total annual domestic air travel expenditure (on all domestic carriers) of less than $500,000 per annum and greater than $20,000 per annum.

I'd say we do about $6-10k depending on the year.

 

[mella2007]

That's a shame. Do call them anyway and see if they'll sign you up. Sometimes they offer 6 months comp also.

 

[lobo76]

That's a shame. Do call them anyway and see if they'll sign you up. Sometimes they offer 6 months comp also.

I'll give it a shot, after I try and get an decent estimate of how much I've spent (multiple carriers) over the last 12 months.

I think they may have enhanced the free Golds though:

Bonus offer for new Virgin Australia accelerate clients.
When you register your business and you are eligible to
join Virgin Australia accelerate, we’ll accelerate 2 of your
top travellers to Velocity Pilot Gold1. This is a three month
trial of Velocity Gold Membership for our corporate
travellers



1. 1Conditions apply. Travellers who are o ered Pilot Gold Membership will
be given Gold Membership for a three month period and will receive all of
the benefi ts of Gold Membership during this time (subject to the benefi ts
which are excluded from Pilot Gold Membership, as set out in Schedule
4, Clause 5 of the accelerate Terms and Conditions). To maintain Gold
Membership after the Pilot Gold Review Date, Travellers must earn 80
Status Credits and fl y at least one Eligible Sector during the Pilot Gold
Review Period. Please refer to Schedule 4 of the accelerate Terms and
Conditions for full Pilot Gold Membership terms and conditions.

 

[kevrosmith]

When you do the calcs on how much you've spent, don't forget to base it on equivalent Flexi (DJ) fares. I'm pretty sure the Accelerate program is based on Flexi fare purchases as a minimum, so it's worth doing the sums based on those rates.

 

[DirkDiggler]

Pretty sure all flights go towards the spend amount not just flexi's as we hardly ever buy them (only when I go to Perth and want to use and upgrade), Just got my letter from them we only started using it around 5 months ago, 22k spent and we got 2% rebate in the form of flight credit (around $440)

When we got the two pilot gold memberships the condition to retain for the next 12 months was 200 SC's within the 3 month trial period.

You don't need to prove spending to join, if you don't meet the minimum you don't get the rebate. You just need a ABN to join, easy way to get two people to gold, pretty good if you time it for a couple of flexi of J fares that will get you the 200SC's

 

[mella2007]

Yep it is all the flights that are included in spend....no matter what type of fare is purchased (however group bookings are excluded from accelerate)

 

[kevrosmith]

http://www.virginaustralia.com/cs/g...ent/~edisp/doc-accelerate-terms-condition.pdf

Page 9. Saver fares are excluded. If your saver fares are being counted, then your business must be lucky that Virgin are not following their own T&Cs...?

Edit: F class. Assume that's a saver or Sale class. Can't find a link for fare classes for Virgin.

Edit 2: FT has them listed http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/virgin-australia-velocity/1224343-virgin-australia-class-code.html. Seems F class is Happy Hour. hmmm.. I better reasses my eligibility for Accelerate.

 

[DirkDiggler]

I just rechecked our account, we have booked 160 domestic return flights and around 10 return TT flights, so the 22k spend does seem low for that number of flights but not so low that only Flexi fares are included. Who knows, maybe they changed the terms part way through.

In hindsight (never really counted how many flights we book with them until now) not sure how happy I am with directly booking close to 350 flights with them in around 5 months and the only thing I get for my loyalty is $440 credit, surely they give more than that to a travel agency!

 

[lobo76]

Well after a little research eligibility is not based on last year but rather what you think you'll do this year, so I applied and got accepted.
I just missed a couple of BNE and SYD returns in Y and J but I'll be booking about $5k of domestics next week so I should make the $20k this year. Shame it's only domestic as I've gotta book 7pax LAX-PER-BNE-LAX next week too so that would have pushed me into 20+ straight away.

So myself and a colleague are now Pilot Gold and I should make that full gold by the end of Oct (assuming the 180 SCs from the flights I booked before I got into the program apply), great result thanks for the heads up!

 

[mella2007]

Well after a little research eligibility is not based on last year but rather what you think you'll do this year, so I applied and got accepted.
I just missed a couple of BNE and SYD returns in Y and J but I'll be booking about $5k of domestics next week so I should make the $20k this year. Shame it's only domestic as I've gotta book 7pax LAX-PER-BNE-LAX next week too so that would have pushed me into 20+ straight away.

So myself and a colleague are now Pilot Gold and I should make that full gold by the end of Oct (assuming the 180 SCs from the flights I booked before I got into the program apply), great result thanks for the heads up!

Glad you applied and got it sorted out!

 

[lobo76]

Glad you applied and got it sorted out!

Seriously, much appreciated. After a few years of paying for other people to fly it's great to be gold
Funnily enough I almost certainly would have made gold this year myself as I've got about 200SC of domestic travel planned and then a trip to the US and Europe next year that will probably contain a bit of a SJU detour
Perhaps now I'll shoot for Platinum! Although that'll be a stretch....

 

[mella2007]

Seriously, much appreciated. After a few years of paying for other people to fly it's great to be gold
Funnily enough I almost certainly would have made gold this year myself as I've got about 200SC of domestic travel planned and then a trip to the US and Europe next year that will probably contain a bit of a SJU detour
Perhaps now I'll shoot for Platinum! Although that'll be a stretch....

Never say never!