GURUGRAM, 19 JULY 2024: Air India has announced an exclusive new partnership with The Bicester Collection, a family of luxury shopping villages, for the airline’s recently redesigned Flying Returns loyalty programme.
The partnership offers Flying Returns reward points on shopping and dining experiences at The Bicester Collection’s open-air luxury shopping villages in Western Europe.
Flying Returns members can collect five points for every GBP4 or EUR4 spent at any of The Bicester Collection’s Villages in Europe. The villages are located a one-hour or less commute from the major cities — London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Munich, Brussels, Dublin, Madrid, and Barcelona.
To earn Reward Points, members need to present their Air India Flying Returns digital membership card along with their receipts at Concierge Services in the villages.
The Bicester Collection’s villages are home to iconic global and European fashion and lifestyle brands offering exceptional savings all year round alongside five-star hospitality and services.
Air India Head of Marketing, Loyalty & E-commerce Sunil Suresh said: “This partnership aligns perfectly with our ongoing efforts to make the ‘reimagined’ Flying Returns a more robust and faster rewarding programme.
“Adding The Bicester Collection to our rapidly growing network of ‘earn’ partners, we’re offering our loyal guests even more opportunities to accumulate points for the experiences they value.”
“The demand for luxury shopping among Indians continues to boom at a record pace, with Indians now being counted amongst the highest spenders during their travels across the world. We’re also equally excited to offer the benefits of this collaboration to our growing base of loyal guests across Europe, to whom we now offer many new ways of collecting Flying Returns points beyond just taking flights to and within India”, Suresh added
This announcement marks the latest step in the airline’s continuing effort to transform Flying Returns. It comes as the airline enters a new phase of its ongoing five-year transformation journey.
In April this year, Air India overhauled Flying Returns, introducing a simplified new structure, more customer-friendly features, renamed tiers, and an updated identity for the programme.
The revamped Flying Returns moves away from the legacy model of miles-based collection of points to a more equitable spend-based approach.
Over the last 18 months, Air India has added over 50 partners for Flying Returns to offer greater ease, more rewards, and recognition for its members.
Air India serves Europe with 94 weekly nonstop flights to India from 10 points, namely Amsterdam Schiphol, Birmingham, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Milan Malpensa, Paris CDG, Vienna, and Zurich.
As it continues to grow its global footprint, Air India has been scaling up its European operations, having inaugurated flights to Zurich last week and with additional flights to Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Milan taking off this month.
