Virgin Velocity Frequent Flyer members will now fly for fewer Velocity Points across Australia with the program’s new domestic Reward Seat pricing, which will be lower than any other Australian airline. The news is welcomed alongside an additional one million rewards seats, as well as a ‘1 Point Rewards’ special offer.
Launching this week ‘1 Point Rewards’ will give Virgin Velocity Frequent Flyer members the opportunity to redeem just one Velocity Point in exchange for domestic and international flights – Bali, Queenstown, and Fiji – as well as marquee items in the Velocity Rewards store.
Don’t get too excited just yet. With no mention of how many ‘1 Point Rewards’ flights will be available in the press release copy, I had to dive into the small print for an ambiguous answer:
1 Point Rewards will only be made available at a certain time each week during the Promotion
Period, for a limited time or until sold out prior. 1 Point Rewards are extremely limited and subject to availability.
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In short, as rare as hen’s teeth.
For ‘1 Point Rewards’ flights, you can try your luck online from Sunday (11 June 2023) or be one of the first hundred people through the door at the ‘1 Point Rewards’ store, set to open on Chapel St Melbourne this Saturday for 24 hours, or until the 1,000 rewards available are sold out.
On the redemption front, from today, more than one million additional Virgin Australia domestic Reward Seats will be released, now starting from 6,200 Velocity Points (previously 7,800 Points).
There are three different base Reward Seat fare prices (in points) that apply to a Virgin Australia Domestic Economy Reward Seat redemption within each given ‘one-way zone,’ based on the availability of and demand for Economy Reward Seats for a particular flight at a given time. These are referred to as Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3.
New Virgin Velocity Frequent Flyer Redemption Tiers
- Tier 1: from 6,200 Velocity Points
- Tier 2: from 7,800 Velocity Points
- Tier 3: from 9,900 Velocity Points
Check out the table from Virgin below.
The one million rewards seats offer runs from today until June 18 for travel between June 5 – June 23, July 17 – September 15, October 9 – December 15; leading into next year for January 8 – March 28 and April 27 – April 30.
The problem with announcing an initiative like ‘1 Point Rewards’ and promising one million additional rewards seats is you’ve set consumer’s expectations, and will likely be disappointed if they can’t access the rewards – as Qantas found out when they hyped the release of “tens of thousands of reward flights,” and crashed their site for 72 hours and got nothing but bad press.
Let’s hope Virgin can pull this one off!
