May 6, 2024

Southwest Airlines and Rocket Travel by Agoda Introduce New Hotel Booking Capabilities

By
Rocket Travel by Agoda

Southwest Airlines®and Rocket Travel by Agoda are elevating their longstanding partnership by offering Southwest Rapid Rewards® Members the ability to use their RapidRewards® points for hotel stays on hotels.redeemrapidrewards.com powered by Rocket Travel by Agoda.

The new redemption offering gives Members more flexibility, allowing them to use points for hotel bookings. This enhancement complements the existing Southwest Hotels platform powered by Rocket Travel by Agoda and Booking.com, which allows Customers to earn Rapid Rewards points on hotel bookings.

Additionally, Members booking travel can choose to pay for hotel bookings using only points, or a combination of cash and points, on bookings to more than 400,000 hotels, motels, resorts, villas, and more worldwide. It comes with user-friendly features travelers expect when booking their getaways: photos, verified customer reviews, map views, flexible cancellation policies, and 24/7 customer service and matches Southwest Airlines’ Purpose of connecting people to what’s important in their lives.

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“Our award-winning Southwest Rapid Rewards program is designed around a simple concept—make earning and redeeming reward flights faster and easier,” said Phil Gouel, Vice President Travel Products at Southwest Airlines. “The ability to now use points for hotel bookings further extends our commitment to our most loyal Members, giving them more flexibility on ways to earn and spend their points.”

Rocket Travel by Agoda has worked with Southwest Airlines for over a decade, giving Rapid Rewards Members the ability to earn points on their hotel bookings, and is pleased to now extend its support by adding this hotel redemption enhancement.

In-depth consumer journeys drive engagement throughout every phase of the customer lifecycle. A robust suite of transactional emails ensure customers have all the information needed at their fingertips from booking, to check-in, and post-trip. Dynamic cross-sell strategies allow us to drive high attach rates with other travel products offered by our partners, generating incremental bookings and boosting the value of each trip, and abandoned search and welcome series ensures customers understand the value of our partners’ travel platforms and stay loyal to our partners’ brands.
Personalized content leveraged throughout our emails, delivering a unique experience for the consumer. Our personalized email communications ensure each customer has all the information they need throughout their travels, easy ways to contact our customer loyalty team for assistance, and suggest travel destinations based on their personal travel preferences. This adds a level of convenience to the consumer experience and drives engagement with our partners’ brands.
Utilizing AI is quickly becoming a cornerstone of email marketing. Using artificial intelligence allows our marketing teams to quickly drive innovation through A/B experimentation. In testing, we have found it to be very effective at driving results and are developing new ways to leverage this emerging technology as email marketing services continue to expand.
Segmenting audiences based on previous engagement data to deliver new messages to the customer and drive continued engagement with our white label platforms.
Robust reporting enables us to continually optimize the performance of our campaigns, and keep partners informed of success and areas of opportunity at every phase of a partnership.
“While the Rocket Travel by Agoda team can ‘do it all’ from the jump and launch multi-vertical travel portals with earn and burn capabilities, we also have the flexibility to grow solutions over time in alignment with our partners’ strategic plans,” said Damien Pfirsch, Head of Rocket Travel by Agoda and Agoda Chief Commercial Officer at Rocket Travel by Agoda. “It’s exciting to see this aspect of the Rapid Rewards program* come to life, deepening Southwest’s relationship with its loyalty Members.”

‍

* RAPID REWARDS TERMS AND CONDITIONS

All Rapid Rewards rules and regulations apply and can be found at Southwest.com/rrterms.

About the author

Rocket Travel by Agoda, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is a leader in the travel industry offering technology and marketing solutions for some of the largest consumer brands in the world.

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May 6, 2024

Southwest Airlines and Rocket Travel by Agoda Introduce New Hotel Booking Capabilities

Southwest Airlines®and Rocket Travel by Agoda are elevating their longstanding partnership by offering Southwest Rapid Rewards® Members the ability to use their RapidRewards® points for hotel stays on hotels.redeemrapidrewards.com powered by Rocket Travel by Agoda.

The new redemption offering gives Members more flexibility, allowing them to use points for hotel bookings. This enhancement complements the existing Southwest Hotels platform powered by Rocket Travel by Agoda and Booking.com, which allows Customers to earn Rapid Rewards points on hotel bookings.

Additionally, Members booking travel can choose to pay for hotel bookings using only points, or a combination of cash and points, on bookings to more than 400,000 hotels, motels, resorts, villas, and more worldwide. It comes with user-friendly features travelers expect when booking their getaways: photos, verified customer reviews, map views, flexible cancellation policies, and 24/7 customer service and matches Southwest Airlines’ Purpose of connecting people to what’s important in their lives.

“Our award-winning Southwest Rapid Rewards program is designed around a simple concept—make earning and redeeming reward flights faster and easier,” said Phil Gouel, Vice President Travel Products at Southwest Airlines. “The ability to now use points for hotel bookings further extends our commitment to our most loyal Members, giving them more flexibility on ways to earn and spend their points.”
In-depth consumer journeys drive engagement throughout every phase of the customer lifecycle. A robust suite of transactional emails ensure customers have all the information needed at their fingertips from booking, to check-in, and post-trip. Dynamic cross-sell strategies allow us to drive high attach rates with other travel products offered by our partners, generating incremental bookings and boosting the value of each trip, and abandoned search and welcome series ensures customers understand the value of our partners’ travel platforms and stay loyal to our partners’ brands.
Personalized content leveraged throughout our emails, delivering a unique experience for the consumer. Our personalized email communications ensure each customer has all the information they need throughout their travels, easy ways to contact our customer loyalty team for assistance, and suggest travel destinations based on their personal travel preferences. This adds a level of convenience to the consumer experience and drives engagement with our partners’ brands.
Utilizing AI is quickly becoming a cornerstone of email marketing. Using artificial intelligence allows our marketing teams to quickly drive innovation through A/B experimentation. In testing, we have found it to be very effective at driving results and are developing new ways to leverage this emerging technology as email marketing services continue to expand.
Segmenting audiences based on previous engagement data to deliver new messages to the customer and drive continued engagement with our white label platforms.
Robust reporting enables us to continually optimize the performance of our campaigns, and keep partners informed of success and areas of opportunity at every phase of a partnership.
“While the Rocket Travel by Agoda team can ‘do it all’ from the jump and launch multi-vertical travel portals with earn and burn capabilities, we also have the flexibility to grow solutions over time in alignment with our partners’ strategic plans,” said Damien Pfirsch, Head of Rocket Travel by Agoda and Agoda Chief Commercial Officer at Rocket Travel by Agoda. “It’s exciting to see this aspect of the Rapid Rewards program* come to life, deepening Southwest’s relationship with its loyalty Members.”

‍

* RAPID REWARDS TERMS AND CONDITIONS

All Rapid Rewards rules and regulations apply and can be found at Southwest.com/rrterms.

More articles to check out:

The Biggest Challenges Brands See in Their Travel Programs — and How To Solve for Them

How A Major Global Airline Unified the Customer Experience and Increased Bookings by 37%

How Brands Can Customize Their Loyalty Program To Continue To Build Preference

Leveraging Wholesale Rates To Drive Performance

Download PDF to keep reading