DSC is a Qantas Loyalty initiative, and they don’t really care about your first three points. It will be interesting if status extensions impact booking volumes, maybe they will, who knows. But not long to wait to find out.
respectfully disagree on this.
While yes, I agree, QF Loyalty decides on such things as DSC promotions, extensions and so on, they *need* for any promotions is governed by factors usually not related to loyalty.
In this sense, to me anyway, they do "care" about things like demand - but in different ways. Yes, more customers is great. More engagement with tiered customers (ie: those with status) is great - yes, they love this. Bonus SC (or points) promos though are probably seen, on the loyalty side, as diluting things rather than being helpful in a time of high demand. Sure, they'd always want to handcuff a newbie with them getting to Silver or Gold or higher on the back of a status match or promo - absolutely - that has obvious future benefits (in theory) for the airline and you'd always want that at a base level. However, I feel, often these promotions are run by loyalty but at the behest of other areas of the company - those seeking to shore up future bookings (or in other words, inject some cash from a bunch of new bookings) - or perhaps via marketing or something to "throw them a bone" - get some extra bookings for those looking to renew or aspire to a higher level. These are demand drivers.
Usually promotions like DSC, DP etc are designed to stimulate demand. In the same ways sales are, but from a different perspective. While I'm no expert in the game, the key difference to me is that sales are designed to stimulate demand where forecast booking levels are low(or at least lower than forecast or desired) and they are willing to sacrifice yield they probably won't achieve with higher pricing for bums on seats(tickets sold) at sale prices. These levers can be used on specific routes (eg: SFO sale) and short of global sales this would be a main level to push up a route that may be new, or struggling a bit.
OTOH, a bonus SC promotion while also trying to stimulate demand and saying to folks - hey we know you'll buy with us (because you have status, so more likely to repeat buy as opposed to general members) but we don't quite have the overall forward bookings we want, or it's a traditional lower season, or whatever... so let's try and tempt those folks to buy our product. While there have been very specifically targeted (route wise) promos over the journey, mostly they're global for any QF operated flight booking, and those heydays of certain codeshares (like the beautiful ones allowing QF flight numbers on EK, or even EK trans tasman - and even those were throwing EK a bone in a way to give THEM capacity through promo driven sales).
At any rate, these two options are demand related. It's pretty difficult for QF to influence the supply (capacity) side right now for reasons already discussed.
We already know demand at QF (and most airlines worldwide) is still very high - and on some routes well ahead of supply - pushing up prices and well yes, giving a carrier like QF some healthy yield.
These were all factors in the first 3 points raised.
Basically demand is already high. QF noted in their recent presentation the outlook remains strong and they expect the demand profile to continue - and while QF is adding some capacity hopefully (those 3 787's and later A220's starting to arrive) that's not really going to do much on the supply side in the overall scheme of things.
So QF's motivations for ANY promotions to drive demand are far less less than in previous years - they don't need to create what they already seemingly have in spades so for QF the upside is going to probably be quite small in terms of increased bookings vs what they'd have already, and post the status extensions there's potentially some desire to "thin the herd" at this point rather than making it easier.
Now sure, If I'm wrong then I'm wrong and in this particular case, I'm more than happy to be wrong as a bonus SC promo would be appreciated by so many folks so that's a win-win for everyone!
I just can't see the argument for pushing such a promo from within QF at this point. Even Loyalty probably don't want more status members given QF's doing well with demand as is - so any status made will be real - and at a higher yield to QF in the process - no need to halve that.
Of course we'll see. I do definitely believe, as I have written many times before, that the current environment does not exactly meet the need for such a promo. Doesn't preclude one being run of course, but I can't find the justification for one when looking at it from the airline's POV.
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