Qantas Mulls Lounge Membership Gifting for Points Club Plus

For Qantas Frequent Flyer members who earn at least 350,000 points each year, Points Club Plus membership comes with some great benefits. But for Qantas flyers who already hold Gold, Platinum or Platinum One status, one of the key Points Club Plus benefits is absolutely useless.

Qantas has realised this, and could now be considering changes to make the highest tier in its Points Club program more attractive.

Qantas Club perks for Points Club members

Introduced in March 2020, Qantas Points Club offers exclusive extra benefits to Qantas Frequent Flyer members who earn large amounts of Qantas points on the ground.

The first tier, Points Club, is unlocked after earning 150,000 Qantas points within a single membership year. The second and highest tier, Points Club Plus, is unlocked by earning 350,000 Qantas points in a year. Only a maximum of 20,000 points earned from flying can be counted each year towards Points Club, so the majority of these points need to be earned from non-flying activities (such as credit card spend).

Perks of Qantas Points Club membership include the ability to earn status credits on reward flights, hotel & wine vouchers and Qantas Club lounge access benefits.

As a reward for reaching Points Club, the lower-tiered Points Club members receive two complimentary Qantas lounge invitations each year. These are transferrable and can be given to anyone.

Upon reaching the higher Points Club Plus tier, Qantas goes further by giving out complimentary Qantas Club membership. However, this is not transferrable and can only be used by the member who earned it.

The problem with gifting Qantas Club membership to Gold, Platinum & Platinum One frequent flyers

Qantas frequent flyers with Gold, Platinum or Platinum One status already receive complimentary Qantas Club membership as a benefit of their status. So, the free Qantas Club benefit that comes with Points Club Plus membership offers no additional benefit.

If anything, some Gold frequent flyers who also happen to be Points Club Plus members may decide to let their status lapse since they already receive Qantas Club membership for free anyway.

For some Points Club Plus members, complimentary Qantas Club membership is a great perk. But for those who already have status with the airline, the Qantas Club benefit given to lower-tiered Points Club members is actually more valuable as it can at least be used by a friend or family member!

What is Qantas considering changing?

Qantas has hinted that it’s considering changing this in a recent survey sent to selected Points Club Plus members. In this survey, it asked Platinum frequent flyers who also held Points Club Plus membership how they would prefer to use their “extra” Qantas Club membership.

One option suggested was the ability to “retain the Qantas Club membership for yourself to extend the expiry date of your current membership”.

Another option could be “the ability to transfer Qantas Club membership to another QFF member”.

This idea has a lot of merit. Firstly, it addresses the bizarre situation where some people may actually consider Points Club membership to be more valuable than Points Club Plus membership – even though Points Club Plus requires more than double the number of points to earn. The result could be an added incentive for top-tier frequent flyers to earn more points on the ground.

This could also incentivise more people to fly Qantas. As one AFF member suggests…

Both those options seem good, but gifting probably the better. It would be nice to actually have the option.
It’s actually in QFs interest to gift it. It would incentivise whoever you’ve gifted it to to fly QF rather than another airline.
Another option that would be good would be a travel credit to the value of QC membership. That will never happen though.
– Daver6, 1 July 2022

Since launching Points Club more than two years ago, Qantas has only made changes to the program once. In May 2021, it added hotel & wine vouchers as well as a “Milestone Bonus Reward” to the line-up of program benefits.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Point Club Plus – Sharing of Qantas Club membership under consideration

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.