Tag Archives for skyclub.
Perhaps afraid that someone somewhere actually flying the airline might get value from the SkyMiles program they’ve now devalued even using Skypesos in Delta Air Lines Sky Clubs as well.
Spending points for alcohol in their clubs has gotten 30% more expensive.
An executive was talking a little too loudly in a Delta Air Lines Sky Club in Detroit. It sounds like Delta has terminated Sodexho contracts for running some clubs, and that Los Angeles is getting its differentiated business class lounge soon along with improvements to the Delta One check-in experience.
At the start of the pandemic airlines closed their club lounges as passenger numbers plummeted. With traveling returning lounges have been re-opening, and Delta has re-opened clubs more quickly than its major competitors.
They’ve also done more to bring back food. In fact Delta replaced pre-packaged last month in some clubs with buffet service. Last month I noted Detroit where an employee was plating food off the buffet for passengers. Well, the employee is now gone and Delta has returned to self-service petri dish buffets.
At the Wolfe Research conference yesterday Glen Hauenstein remarked that Delta had 53 Sky Clubs open pre-pandemic and will have 53 open in June. There’s an emphasis on premium product coming out of the recent challenging period. Delta believes that by offering customers more they can get customers to spend more on premium products which are “higher margin.”
But what if they’re achieving that margin by claiming to offer a premium product, but they’re really offering something you can buy at 7-11?
Delta has serious staff shortages. Telephone calls from their best customers are taking up to 41 hours to answer. Now it seems they can’t get anyone to clean their lounges, so they asked various work groups to volunteer as cleaners.
The same rules allowing Delta’s club lounge to serve alcohol despite the Michigan governor’s order closing bars should apply equally to restaurants in the airport for those who don’t have club membership and are willing to pay for a drink.
However it seems a lot easier for people to drink alone, as Michigan’s governor seems to prefer people in her state do, than make a trip out to the airport just for liquor. It would be fascinating to see Delta’s internal data over the next three weeks about whether alcohol consumption continues to track with passenger numbers, or whether it increases on a per-admittance basis in to the club.
Everyone pauses in place and gets a do-over. That’s the message from Delta which announced an extension of elite status, club memberships, vouchers and more.
There’s a natural reason why Delta is first among U.S. airlines to do this – and an advantage they have in rollover qualifying miles that better positions them to still take advantage of their elite program when travel comes back.
Sometimes a pop up lounge is meant to serve a member base where they find themselves during a peak period, sometimes it foretells a future club location.
There isn’t just one pop up lounge strategy, so it’s difficult to know exactly what Delta is doing here, but they’ve run a series of pop up SkyClubs at some smaller market airports.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
