This is another installment in my THE FUTURE OF TRAVEL blog series. Today I’m focussing on Aeroplan, probably Canada’s most popular travel rewards plan. Like many companies, they’re updating policies and extending deadlines to accommodate folks who’ve been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. These changes are definitely helpful for consumers. I also have the latest update on what U.S. travellers are thinking about future travel plans.
Aeroplan officials sent this statement out today (April 28, 2020):
“We are extending two earlier changes we made to the Aeroplan program:
Full flexibility for cancelling flight rewards
We’re extending our flexible policy for cancelling Aeroplan Flight Rewards through to June 30. Members can cancel free of charge and receive all of their Aeroplan Miles back in their account, plus a full refund of any associated taxes, fees and surcharges on the unused value of your travel.
Temporary pause of Aeroplan Miles expiry
In normal circumstances, it only takes earning, redeeming, transferring a single Aeroplan Mile in a twelve-month period to maintain an active status, and prevent miles from expiring. In these extenuating times, we have extended our pause on expiry until June 29, 2020. This means that between now and June 29, if a members’ miles were to have expired, they will not. Effective June 30, our normal expiration policy will once again apply, meaning that miles will expire if an eligible transaction has not been completed prior to this date.
As part of our ongoing efforts to engage our members while they’re at home and give them new ways to earn miles, we’ve launched our next offers as part of our Travel at Home campaign which enables members to reach Altitude status without leaving the ground. There are some great offers when shopping for Mom this Mother’s Day via our eStore:
- Until May 10, shop favourite brands for Mother’s Day like lululemon, Sephora, Hudson’s Bay, Coach, 1-800-Flowers and more. Earn up to 7X the miles when you shop for hair products like the Dyson Supersonic™ and beauty products at Aveda via the Aeroplan eStore through to May 7 (pretty handy during this time of closed hair salons, I would think). Visit www.aeroplan.com/estore for more details.
“Lastly, don’t forget that this Wednesday and Thursday are the last two days to receive one Bonus Altitude Qualifying Mile (AQM) for every five Aeroplan Miles you donate to a participating charity fighting COVID-19. Thanks to our members generosity, since we announced this initiative on April 6th, our members have donated more than 52 million miles – an incredible number.
Each week, we’ll have new offers for members to be able to earn at home. Visit: www.aeroplan.com/travelathome to learn more about this promotion.”
A cable car in San Francisco. Suzanne-Emily-O’Connor-Unsplash Photo
LONGWOODS U.S. TRAVEL STUDY
The question for the U.S. travel industry may now be, if you open it, will they come? According to a Longwoods International tracking study of American travellers and the coronavirus pandemic, 82% of them have changed their travel plans for the next six months because of coronavirus, virtually unchanged for the past month. When asked how these travellers will change their plans because of the pandemic, 50% said they would cancel some trips and 45% said they will reduce travel in the next six months. These have also remained steady over the past month.
“We’ve clearly reached an inflection point in traveler sentiment surrounding the COVID-19 crisis,” observes Amir Eylon, President and CEO of Longwoods International. “All of those who can be impacted have been, and those who have been impacted will continue to be so until the country begins to open up on a widescale manner.”
The survey, supported by Miles Partnership, was fielded April 22, 2020 using a national sample randomly drawn from a consumer panel of 1,000 adults, ages 18 and over. Quotas were used to match Census targets for age, gender, and region to make the survey representative of the U. S. population.
The percentage of American travellers planning trips in the next six months was 69%, far below the 87% planning trips six weeks ago. The coronavirus pandemic continues to be a more significant factor affecting U.S. travel in the next six months, compared with concerns about the economy and transportation costs.
In the only bright spot in this week’s results, the percentage of those surveyed who indicated that the coronavirus pandemic would “greatly impact” their decision to travel in the next six months has trended slightly downward in the past four weeks, from 67% to 61%, though still far above the 35% on March 11th. Federal health officials are viewed as the most important information source about the pandemic, followed at some distance by federal and state elected officials and state health authorities.
