BANGOR, Maine — An idea born from a presentation during an airport industry conference a year ago is poised to take flight soon at Bangor International Airport.
While attending the conference in 2011, BIA Marketing Manager Risteen Bahr sat in on a panel presentation about airport reward programs for customers.
“They talked about things they do for incentives to create customer loyalty,” Bahr explained. “We all agreed it was a good idea, so we started looking into this program and others, along with the possibility of creating our own.”
Bahr said it became very obvious early on that starting and operating their own customer loyalty program would be both time-consuming and expensive for BIA staff.
“We started researching companies that provide the service for airports and this one kept coming to the top,” said Bahr. “They came up to give us a presentation in July.”
They are Thanks Again, a Georgia-based loyalty rewards program company which began operations in 2004.
The program operates basically the same as any other customer rewards program, earning members one mile with one airline selected by the member for every dollar spent at BIA, other businesses and even other airports.
The Bangor City Council’s Airport Committee unanimously approved the loyalty program plan and the full council can vote on it as early as Monday night.
“If we get approval, we’ll try to kick things off shortly in a month,” Bahr said. “We think we could get this rolled out by the end of October and work with the Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureau to promote it.”
The program will cost a monthly fee, which ranges from $7.50 to $2.50 in the Thanks Again system.
“The customer chooses which airline he wants his program points to accumulate miles with,” Bahr explained. “The point totals are different from airline to airline, but I think most airlines have switched over to nonexpiring mileage systems.”
All airlines except Allegiant will participate in the Bangor program.
Bahr said this program is open to all Maine residents as well as Canadians, who are responsible for a marked increase in the number of customers from outside Maine using BIA.
“It’s engendered by the fact that smaller airports were trying to find a way to incentivize people to use their facilities. Rewards points come from money spent on parking, merchandise sales and food in the airport, and we’ll reach out to other businesses and services like the Four Points by Sheraton here and other hotels in the area,” Bahr said.
Passengers and employees will be able to enroll online on a secure site at www.thanksagain.com and can automatically begin earning one mile for every dollar spent at any of the airport’s facilities. Bahr said up to 25,000 bonus miles can be earned every 90 days based on cumulative registered card purchases at more than 170 airports and 25,000 local businesses in the U.S. and Canada.
Airport officials said the program has a dual purpose: To thank customers for repeated business and to provide incentives for them to keep coming back.
“Certainly it’s good to help curb some of the leakage we get of customers to other airports and it’s also a way of rewarding their loyalty and continued business,” said BIA Director Anthony Caruso. “It also gives us an opportunity to work with our concessionaires here in the airport on another level, so it certainly should be a great benefit for the airport and customers alike.”
As a business traveler and frequent flier, another “loyalty” program is NOT what I want.
I have seen positive trends at BIA over the past few years with improvements such as free WiFi and renovated restrooms and gate areas but BGR needs further modernization if the airport is going to continue to attract customers. In my opinion, a loyalty program is a waste of money that will do nothing to divert customers from the more popular PWM, MHT and BOS airports with better facilities.
This airport was thriving when Rebecca Hupp took the reins. Now it’s barely ticking along. Most of the domestic competition has left, and the bulk of the international arrivals are troop carriers. There is certainly a need for the air carriers to come. Most, if not all of the seats are full in and out of BGR. As long as there isn’t a discount air carrier coming here, the fares will continue to be exorbitant. The landing fees, gate fees, and fuel are not competitive here.
How about an $80 coupon book that gives me 11 days of parking or a 6-pack of large coffees for the price of 5.
I already have a mileage program – give me a tangible return for my money spent.
Give us air service to Boston and other markets, JetBlue or Southwest needs to come to Bangor to start up competition and lower airfares while at it
Sorry Charlie, it’s worth the bus fare and the time to fly out of Boston or Portland. They can’t award me enough to fly out of Bangor.
It’s not always worth it to go elsewhere. I will be flying in February with my 6-year old. It was only $200 more to get my tickets from Bangor, than Boston, Providence, Manchester, OR Portland. To me, it’s SO worth the extra $200 to save my daughter a 4-6 hour ride to any of these other airports, the parking there (can get a ride to Bangor), and the extra night at a hotel at either end of our stay.
$200 is very worth leaving out of Bangor but you also need to look at this option here. I took my family ( with 2 kids) to Disney this past March. We flew out of Manchester, NH direct on Southwest. Saved $300 a ticket but best of all, direct flight to and from. My sister and her family (two kids as well) left out of Bangor the same time. We drove the 4 hours when we came home and was back by 7:00. My sister and her family, without any delays, arrived at 11:45pm and was home by 12:30am. Bangor is not worth it as an airport for me. Was flying out of BGR worth it???
BIA needs to go after and prove to Southwest or JetBlue that they need to come up here. Then they need to market a flight into Canada to get the Canadian traffic a bit more. I bet many of them would love to fly to BGR instead of driving here.
I see what you are saying. In our specific case, Bangor makes sense- the flight times aren’t that different, cost is only slightly more ($200 total, not per tickrt), and we’re only an hour from home which means no hotel the night before we leave or when we get home. I had immediately gone looking at the other airports, and was pleasanly surprised when I checked Bangor ‘just for fun’.
One mile for every dollar isn’t going to be very much. I definitely think the idea of a rewards program is a good one, but there needs to be more than one mile per dollar. You need thousands of miles to get any benefit from them.
Free parking, a separate and faster security check-in, free bottled water in the waiting area…stuff like that goes a long way with me.
Sounds like BGR should have conducted a market survey prior to committing to this program. You’re right, free parking, water, etc would be nice things to have, versus spending what I suspect will be some crazy amount of money to get a free trip (when we can already do that through airline specific FF programs.)
The ThanksAgain web site is clunky.