The Qantas Aquire program has a free join promotion underway that may be of interest to businesses eligible to enrol in the Aquire Program
Free Join Offer
If you have an ABN and aren’t already a member of the Qantas Aquire program, now could be the time, with Qantas Aquire offering the chance to join for free.This is a saving of $89.50 on the normal Membership Fee.
To take advantage of this offer, you will need to be a Qantas Frequent Flyer, have an ABN, and register for Aquire by December 24, 2015 You can join Aquire for free, if you sign up by December 24, 2015 at this web page.
The Qantas Aquire Program
The Qantas Aquire program is targetted at Small to Medium Businesses in Austaralia. It is open to any business entity with an ABN – and can include the likes of sole traders through to companies that may have a number of employees. Larger business entities that operate under an ACN are not eligible for this program.
The Aquire program sits alongside the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, and while points are initially earned as Aquire Points, they can be moved to nominated Qantas Frequent Flyer accounts. The main way of earning Aquire Points is by adding your ABN into your bookings on Qantas.com.
Aquire also has a range of partners, where you can earn points on a range of business products.
Earning Points
Qantas Earn
Aquire points can be earned on all Qantas marketed flights (that is flights that are sold with a QF flight number) where the ticket has been issued by Qantas. In addition, the flight needs to be operated by either Qantas, Emirates or American Airlines. To be eligible to earn Aquire Points, the flight needs to be one that would ordinarily earn Qantas Frequent Flyer Points, so Classic Awards are excluded. It is also important to note, that a Qantas Frequent Flyer number is also attached to the booking, as if you credit the points to a different program, you may not receive any Aquire Points.
The number of Aquire points earned is derived from the number of Qantas Points that a base Bronze Qantas Frequent Flyer would earn. The table that sets out the earn rate for Aquire may be found here. You can find the table that outlines the Aquire earn rate may be viewed here. The table shows that the earn rate variies from 30% of the Qantas Frequent Flyer earn on the discounted economy fares, through to 50% of the Qantas Frequent Flyer earn as you move through to the more expensive tickets, such as First Class.
One factor that need to be kept in miind, is that in each year of membership you need to earn 20,000 Aquire Points from flying earn before you are able to move them across to a Qantas Frequent Flyer account. Until the point you earn 20,000 Aquire Points, and have earned from two separate travellers, the points will be in a ‘Pending’ status, unable to be moved.
Once you earn the 20,000 points and have two travellers, the points are able to be moved to a Qantas Frequent Flyer account. This hurdle resets in each year of your membership, and if you fail to reach the hurdle in one year, you risk losing any Pending Points you may have collected that year.
Partner Earn
On top of flights, there are a number of earn partners particpating in the program. There are a range of business centric partners in the program, including the likes of Staples, Secure Parking, Avis, Budget and Harvey Norman.
Each partner has its own earn rate, and you can view the full list of partners here.
Using Points
The only real use for Aquire Points is to transfer tham into a personal Qantas Frequent Flyer account. The points transfer at a ratio of 1:1. The points can be transferred to any Qantas Frequent Flyer account associated with your business, allowing you to transfer them to yourself, to an employee, or anyone else really.
There are a couple of restrictions that need to be kept in mind on points transfers though. First up, is the big gotcha that was mentioned earlier, and this affects points earned from flying.
In order to transfer points earned from flying across to Qantas Frequent Flyer you will need to have achieved two criteria:
- 20,000 Aquire Points have been earned from eligible flights and
- At least two Aquire Flyers as defined in the Terms and Conditions, have each travelled on one or more eligible flights within an applicable membership year.
In a given membership year, any points earned from flying will be held in a ‘Pending’ status until the requirements are met. These are probably not insignificant hurdles for the sole trader to meet.
Another issue that needs to be kept in mind, is that should you fail to meet the requirements during the year, you will forfeit the points at the end of the year.
Fortunately, using points earned through partners is less onerous, although again you can only transfer to a Qantas Frequent Flyer account. The main limitation here, is that there is a minimum of 3,000 Aquire Points that can be transferred to Qantas Points in a transaction. There is no ‘Pending’ Points issue that needs to be considered.
Discounted Flights
Aside from the earning and usage of points outlined above, Aquire also allows access to some discounted flights. The discount varies between 5% and 10% depending on the class of booking:
- Booking Business Class or Premium Economy at least 10 days before you flight will offer you a 10% discount.
- Booking Economy Flex (Domestic or International) tickets at least 7 days before travel will earn you 5% discount.
To take advantage of these discounts, you will also need to be a member of Qantas Business Direct.