Want to take that trip to Hawaii? Go shopping.
A growing number of airlines and hotels are joining with retailers in online shopping malls to reward consumers with frequent-flier miles and other travel-related bonuses when they make purchases.
Airlines including Aloha (Maui, here we come), American, Delta and United have 150 or more retail partners, according to a USA Today report. The Intercontinental Hotel and Marriott chains also have deals in place with retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Old Navy.
Consumers are eligible for the travel bonuses when they link to a retailer from an airline or hotel web site. Consumers going directly to a retailer's site are not eligible for the travel bonuses.
Both retailers and travel businesses seem happy to be linked with one another. Retailers get additional traffic with consumers motivated to purchase at their web sites. Airlines and hotels receive payment from the retailers for agreeing to link to their sites.
US Airways is moving into this area with its own Dividend Miles Mall scheduled to takeoff next month. The company claims that the program will not be a typical online mall.
"We have a high-end partner that truly knows retailing," said US Airways spokesperson Morgan Durrant. "We will be rotating top-quality merchandise and be able to offer higher mileage on certain individual products than our competitors."
It's often not easy to find online shopping malls through airline and hotel sites. As the USA Today report points out, the shopping sites are not typically featured on a travel partner's web site. Often, the retailer's web sites can only be linked to from an airline or hotel's own loyalty program page.
Whether airlines and hotels feature retailer sites more prominently will depend on the success of these programs compared to other avenues.
Hawaiian Airlines Vice President Keoni Wagner said the method "is growing at a fast rate, but we think it will be some time before it catches up to earning from the credit card."
The eventual success or failure of these programs comes down, as always, to the consumer.
Steve Gorman, a frequent flier who lives in Atlanta, said, "if two retailers have similar products and services, and one has a miles/points program, it will get my business 100 percent of the time."
Adam Conrad of Hollidaysburg, Pa., said there are too many hurdles to get over to buy from online retailers with frequent flier programs.
"This is a great concept, but it is difficult mechanically," he said. "There are often additional sign-ons and passwords to manage."
Discussion Questions: Do you see opportunity and value for retailers to be associated with these travel program tie-ins? What do you see as impediments to this business and solutions for increasing the popularity of these programs? Do you, for example, see these types of programs migrating from online to in-store?