I just completed a rather interesting survey sent to me by Amtrak‘s Guest Rewards program. I started in on it because they promised me 250 points to and the conference call I was dialed in to wasn’t particularly exciting. As I started clicking through the survey it became clear to me that the survey was quite a bit more interesting than the conference call.
The focus was on travel to Europe. Things like how often I visit (very!) and if I visit more than one city on an average trip (definitely) and if I was familiar with any of the train services offered in Europe. There were actually a bunch I don’t recognize so I’ve started building a list for future adventures. But after getting through the background the topic focused quickly on the EuroStar service between London, Brussels and Paris.
EuroStar has their own eponymous Frequent Traveller program but it is only available to travellers with a mailing address in Europe. It seems that Amtrak and EuroStar might be chatting about offering up some sort of reciprocity between their programs. Here are a few of the questions from the survey:
- Amtrak is considering offering Amtrak Guest Rewards points to members who take future trips on Eurostar. If you were able to earn Amtrak Guest Rewards points from trips on Eurostar, would you consider this offer to be…?
- Now, if you were able to redeem your Amtrak Guest Rewards points toward travel on Eurostar, would you consider this to be…?
- If you were able to earn Amtrak Guest Rewards points from trips on Eurostar, how likely would you be to travel on Eurostar between London and Paris (either direction)? Would you say you would be…?
Needless to say, I responded quite positively on these and the other, similar questions posed. No idea if it will be a good value or not, but the opportunity to expand the earning and redemption options is something I pretty much always enjoy. Here’s hoping it comes to pass.
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E*’s frequent traveller programme is a bit bizarre, and to qualify you need to buy at least one full-fare ticket. It’s reasonably generous though. I wonder if there are plans to start a plan for RailTeam, which is the nascent alliance of European high-speed rail companies, cast very much from the mould of airline alliances.
Reciprocity would be a really good feature; I wonder how many people would use it? (I would, but then I get strange looks from US colleagues when I talk about taking the train rather than driving places).