Case Study: United Airlines achieves double-digit year-over-year growth in hotel and car redemptions with Switchfly

United Airlines - Customer Case Study

United Airlines’ MileagePlus program — with over 90 million members and flights to 370+ destinations — wanted to drive greater use of miles and deepen loyalty by offering a wider range of redemption options at varied price points, without adding significant overhead. The challenge was to launch a scalable, personalized hotel and car redemption experience that fit into existing MileagePlus segmentation and CRM capabilities.

In 2009 United partnered with Switchfly to launch hotel and car awards that automatically convert cash prices to miles, support multiple languages and channels, and integrate with MileagePlus segmentation and SSO. The program delivered immediate ROI, enabled data-driven targeted marketing, and produced double-digit year-over-year growth in hotel and car redemptions (over 130K redemptions/year), a +10% lift in member conversion, higher engagement and earnings among redeemers, and improved redemption cost management.

United Airlines

Michelle Brown

Managing Director of Redemption Management