Marketers Buy Airline Miles to Give as Incentives

A Canadian loyalty-marketing firm has gone to Broadway to raise consumer awareness for its fledgling airline miles program AirIncentives.

AirIncentives lets marketers buy airline miles to give to consumers as purchase incentives. Consumers redeem those miles through their own frequent-flier accounts. The program launched July 1 with six airline partners in the U.S.: Northwest Airlines (via its WorldPerks frequent flier program) Delta Airlines (Delta SkyMiles), US Airways (Dividend Miles), America West (FlightFund), Alaska Airlines (Mileage Plan) and Midwest Airlines (Midwest Miles). Airline consortiums Star Alliance and SkyTeam honor AirIncentive miles overseas.

The Broadway promotion gives away AirIncentive miles to audience members of Plane Crazy, a musical about 1960s air travel that’s running as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival from Sept. 12 to Oct. 2. Ticket holders get a mileage code certificate when they enter the theater; codes are redeemed at Airincentives.com, where ticket holders enter the certificate code and their frequent-flier account number. AirIncentives deposits the miles directly into individuals’ frequent-flier accounts at one of the six participating airlines.

“To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever used frequent flyer miles as an incentive on Broadway before,” said Points International President Christopher Barnard in a statement. “We believe that this will open up a whole new channel in the arts for using … miles and points for rewarding loyal theater- and concert-goers.”

AirIncentives is run by Toronto-based Points International, whose flagship property Points.com lets consumers buy, sell and swap miles and points from 25 loyalty marketing programs including American Airlines’ AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, Starbucks, Cendant Trip Rewards and Intercontinental Hotels Group’s Priority Club Rewards. Four-year-old Points.com has 770,000 consumer members.

Last month, Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Music joined Points.com to let consumers redeem loyalty points and miles for music downloads. It’s “a novel trade-in option,” said MSN’s lead product manager Christine Andrews in a statement. “Music downloads, whether of one song or 100, are a great way to make use of small and odd lots of miles or points.”

Separately, San Francisco-based Loyalty Lab, which manages loyalty programs for retailers including The Sharper Image and Smith & Hawken, last month partnered with Points.com to let consumers take points they’ve earned in retailers’ programs and redeem them with Points.com vendors for airline miles, hotel rooms and other travel rewards.