It may come as a surprise to many, but the more miles airline passengers consume, the better it is for the airline; Whenever miles expire, customers lose their trust in getting the expected value from mileage programs and may question whether the membership is worth it.

It’s wasted potential when customers don’t get the most out of loyalty schemes.

Lufthansa wanted to find a solution to this by reducing unredeemed miles while at the same time revaluing their frequent flyer Miles & More accounts. The idea was to encourage miles spending and let their customers spend even a small amount of miles, from as little as 7,000 award miles. The goal was also to generate new revenue streams by motivating them to use partial miles on regular revenue flights, instead of limiting customers to the sole availability of the traditional redemption class.

We developed an innovative solution that incites travelers to make the most out of their miles, the Amadeus Miles & Cash Slider. With this solution, Miles & More loyalty members can now choose how they wish to pay for their purchase: in miles, cash, or a combination of both. After logging onto LH.com with their Miles & More credentials, they simply select the flight and adjust the number of miles they’d like to spend. They can do this with the sliding scale or by typing in the number of miles.

Since its rollout within the Lufthansa website, the Amadeus Miles & Cash Slider has boosted revenues, and empowered Lufthansa customers to make the most of their miles. The results speak for themselves:

• 20€ higher average ticket revenue with Miles & Cash bookings vs usual bookings
• 70% of Miles & Cash bookings are paid with more than 80% of customers’ total mileage
• 30% of customers say they would not have bought the ticket without Miles & Cash

Lufthansa is now enabling its customers to spend miles on whatever flight and date they wish – thus solving one of the key pain-points with loyalty programs. The Amadeus Miles & Cash Slider delivers great commercial results and true customer benefits.

For more– have a look at this video and download a copy of the Lufthansa – Amadeus case study.

Christian Von Thuemen
Account Director, Lufthansa Group and Star Alliance, Amadeus IT Group