🗂 Overview

If you’ve ever tried to book a reward flight with an airline you might have had a pretty hard time trying to find a reward flight. They are notoriously hard to search for, especially for airlines like British Airways.

Over the years, airline mileage programs have become a massive profit centre for airlines and an unexpected financial saviour for the carriers as the pandemic crashed airline travel.

Frequent flyer programs generate significant revenue for airlines as they sell reward points to other companies, such as credit cards and hotel chains, who offer them as rewards to their customers.

However, airlines aren’t really financially incentivised to increase their reward flight availability beyond a certain point. According to McKinsey, 20% of redemptions end up on flights that take off full. Airlines could probably have sold those seats for real money. Airlines will limit award space on certain flights where they think they can find more paying passengers.

But as the cost of air travel increases, more people are turning to frequent flyer points to reduce the cost of travel. This means more competition for seats, and which means finding availability is going to get even harder than it currently is.

Let’s see how we can build a business around this.

🤔 Quick question

📈 Stats

• A 2021 survey found that 41% of Americans are members of a travel loyalty program, with airlines and hotels being the most popular ones. (source)

• In 2023, Delta Airlines' Sky Miles was the most valuable airline loyalty program worldwide, with a valuation of $33.1 billion. (source)

• The British Airways Executive Club, which includes Avios, has more than thirteen million members worldwide as of 2023. (source)

• Avios can be used on British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus, Aer Lingus AerClub, and Qatar Airways Privilege Club.

• In 2022, Qantas (Australia’s largest Airline) recorded over 14 million members of its frequent flyer program.

• According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index, airfare prices increased by 17.7% from March 2022 to March 2023. (source)

According to Statista, the number of members in selected airline loyalty programs worldwide as of 2019 are as follows:

• American Airlines AAdvantage: 115 million members

• Delta Air Lines SkyMiles: 100 million members

• United Airlines MileagePlus: 95 million members

• Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards: 53 million members

• Air France-KLM Flying Blue: 27 million members

• Lufthansa Miles & More: 25 million members

• British Airways Executive Club: 13 million members

• Qantas Frequent Flyer: 13 million members

• Emirates Skywards: 10 million members

• Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles: 10 million members

🧮 Trends

⭐️ Examples

• Seatspy is the most well-known website where users can find reward flights. It has a free plan for economy flights and paid plans for higher tiers. It is estimated to be worth over $9m and they get around 90k visits a month.

• Award Hacker is a free tool but has limited features for example it won’t let you select dates.

• Reward Flight Finder is similar to SeatSpy but only tracks British Airways reward flights. They get an estimated 113k visits a month.

• Expert Flyer is similar to SeatSpy but is super outdated.

• Straight to the Points is a newsletter subscription that provides reward alerts.

• Point.me seems to be the best option out there in terms of UI and reward offerings but there are still drawbacks such as the cost, the search features and the very limited free trial. They also only get an estimated 3k visitors a month.

👎 The Problems

• Airlines release award seats at different times, and it can be challenging to keep track of them.

• Airlines can limit award space on certain flights where they think they can find more paying passengers, making it difficult to find award seats on high-demand routes.

• Some people have complained about the lack of transparency around award pricing and availability, which can make it difficult to plan and book reward flights.

• Searching for Avios reward flights for British Airways is insanely cumbersome, confusing and difficult. Their website is slow, clunky and very out-of-date plus their reward flights are limited and sell out very quickly.

• Existing solutions such as SeatSpy and Points.me make searching for reward flights simpler but are all lacking important features (detailed below).

• Airfares are skyrocketing in price, and so more people are turning to points which is increasing what is already considerable competition.

• Booking award travel for multiple people can be challenging, particularly if you want to find base price ("saver") redemptions.

• Avios has a 1.2 out of 5 on Trustpilot - many complaints are due to their booking system, website and availability.

• SeatSpy has a 3.5 out of 5 on Trustpilot - many complaints around service, billing, misleading or inaccurate information, reward seat delays, and missing routes. The general sentiment is that the idea is solid and it’s very helpful but there are a number of ways it can be improved.

💡 The Idea

Reward Flight Finder SaaS

Every existing tool seems to be lacking some important features and/or costs too much for what they offer - there is no clear better option available despite the very clear demand for such a product.

Here’s how you can be better:

• Link loyalty points to a user account (via AwardWallet and via manual integration with each program - Point.me and SeatSpy offer this).

• Allow users to filter searches that can be done given their current points balances.

• Include every airline loyalty program and also show each of the ones that are linked or have partnerships.

• Include every route for every major airport (SeatSpy is good but is missing pretty much every route I’d like to take).

• Show a breakdown of availability by day of the month (similar to SeatSpy) not just individual dates like Point.me.

• Have a good UI/UX (ExpertFlyer would be amazing if their UI/UX wasn’t from 2003).

• Have an alert feature that can send an SMS, Whatsapp and/or email when there are seats available matching a user’s requirements. Include the option for close match alerts too for example slightly different dates, close-by airports or different airlines.

• Provide a free tier or use a freemium model similar to SeatSpy. Point.me is the most expensive option and has the most limited free trial option (3 searches) by the time you’ve figured out how best to filter your search you’ve run out. A freemium model would be much more effective.

• A rating system to say if the deal is good or bad based on factors such as price history, price vs. points comparison, and other available options. No one currently does this.

• Google Flights has a feature that tells you how cheap/expensive flights are compared to historic levels.

• The SeatSpy “Where Can I Go” feature is great but with their lack of routes isn’t as good as it could be.

• Ensure you have good customer support and that you’re transparent about pricing and features.

• Consider offering a premium done-for-you service on top of this to help busy, higher-ticket users book their travel using points.

• Find ways to integrate AI such as through suggestions for cheaper fares, alternative routes, price prediction, etc

🛠 How to build it

Meal replacement drinks and supplements:

• Market Research: Talk to unhappy or even just existing customers about the existing tools and ask what features they think are missing. Look at reviews, Reddit, and Twitter and see what people are saying. Social listening tools will help massively here. Look for common questions people are asking and make sure you SaaS solves those - this is also great for when it comes time to write content.

• Use Existing Products: Sign up and test the existing products and find what you like and what you don’t like. See how their funnels work and make a note of everything you can improve from customer acquisition to functionality.

• APIs and Web Scraping: This will rely heavily on both APIs and web-scraping. If you don’t know how to do that, find someone who can.

• Beta test: Find people who have experienced the problems your SaaS is solving and ask them to beta-test it. They don;t have to have experienced the problem but it definitely helps if you want detailed feedback.

 🚀 How to grow it

• Google Ads: Run Google Ads on relevant search terms to compete with the likes of SeatSpy and to get in front of high-intent users looking for a solution to their problem.

• Publications: Run ads in and get promoted by points-hacking blogs and channels like Head for Points and The Points Guy. These publications (there are loads just like them) get an insane amount of monthly visitors.

• Content: Consider making content Like Head for Points and The Points Guy on a blog and on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Provide value to your target market in the form of entertainment and helpful information such as industry updates, guides and point hacks. Head for Points has 1.4m visitors each month and has over 13m - so this is absolutely a must-do.

• Email Newsletter: Using the above content, build an email list and promote your Airline Reward Tracker in each send.

• Community: Find people posting about their struggles with booking points or asking questions about it and offer your SaaS as the solution. There are plenty of communities on Reddit and publications like those I listed above have forums and comments you can use as well. People also ask questions and complain about these things a lot on Twitter. Use this tool to monitor social media for these posts (not affiliated).

• Influencers: If you’ve used social media you’ll know that there’s no shortage of travel influencers you can partner with. There are also travel influencers that focus on travel hacking and points hacking that’ll be perfect for you to promote through.

👍 Tips

• Look at reviews for existing products in the market and see how you can improve upon them.

• Don’t reinvent the wheel - combine all the best features from existing tools into one and you’ll be the clear winner.

• Consider starting small - if you want to go to market quicker to validate your idea and get paying customers sooner, start with 1 loyalty program (I recommend BA because it’s terrible) and slowly integrate more as you grow.

• Try searching for reward flights on as many airlines as you can to experience the issue yourself and ensure your SaaS effectively solves the issue.

• If you build this, I will happily beta-test it for you and provide detailed feedback. You can probably tell by how long this edition is, that I have personally encountered this problem and want it solved.

🚦 Signals

Want to see interesting trends that I’ve noticed this week not related to this week’s newsletter topic? Get a sneak preview of 10 emerging trends I’m looking into for future emails.

📚 Resources

• Flutterflow - FlutterFlow lets you build apps incredibly fast in your browser. Build fully functional apps with Firebase integration, API support, animations, and more.

• DDevi - social keyword monitoring tool

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