Qantas trades data for points with frequent flyers

Qantas’ data analytics business Red Planet is looking to sign 100,000 of its loyalty program members to share consumer habits with third-party clients in exchange for frequent flyer points.

Red Planet started inviting frequent flyer members to opt in to the program last week, and is shooting for 100,000 acceptances to represent the wider Australian population in market surveys.

Members will have the opportunity to earn up to 300 points for each survey relating to consumption habits they fill out. Red Planet plans to start pushing the questionnaires to frequent flyers in August this year.

The business insists the privacy of frequent flyer members will be preserved, and only anonymised mapping of consumer sentiment will be provided to its clients rather than raw data.

However, Red Planet may send direct marketing content to participating members on behalf of Red Planet clients based on their responses.

With a membership of 10.7 million customers, Red Planet is looking to leverage the scale of Qantas' existing frequent flyer database to attract third-party clients.

The business was commercialised by Qantas in September last year, borne out of the analytics expertise Qantas had built up over the years of operating its popular loyalty program.

“We have developed so much capability in data analytics we have turned it into an external offering,” Qantas CIO Luc Hennekens told iTnews late last year.

“We must have done something well if people are willing to outsource their analytics to us”.

Qantas “isn’t afraid to get its hands dirty when it comes to experimenting with data", he said.

Red Planet has already signed up Avis Car Rental, Budget Car Rental, iSelect, Hilton hotels, NAB, Bankwest and American Express as customers.

“The richness of our knowledge from over 10.7 million frequent flyer members is hard to beat and the results speak for themselves,” Red Planet boss Vaughan Chandler said in a statement.