BMO has completed the acquisition of AIR MILES

It’s official, BMO Bank of Montreal is now the proud owner of the AIR MILES program. Earlier in May the bankruptcy court approved the acquisition and as of June 1st, it is complete.

BMO is promising to reinvigorate one of Canada’s longest running and most famous programs over the coming months. With over 10 million members we hope this will certainly be true and hopefully those of you have held out on not cashing out your miles and are sticking with the program will be rewarded for your patience.

Here is what AIR MILES is promising to deliver over the next short while:

  • An improved travel booking platform featuring richer offers, more ways to book travel, and new ways for collectors to earn Miles.
  • A new and innovative way for collectors to earn Bonus Miles in connection with eligible purchases through receipt scanning, rolling out first for collectors in Atlantic Canada with other regions to follow.
  • New opportunities to earn and redeem Miles with top Canadian brands in categories including fashion, travel, grocery, meal delivery, home goods and technology.
  • Leveraging AIR MILES’ industry-leading insights and technology to bring more value to the collector and partner experience.

The first bullet point is very interesting seeing that the current AIR MILES Flights platform only launched a couple of years ago. Granted it was met with both fanfare and disappointment. The revamped platform allowed for more flights options around the world including the ability to use miles to book business and first class fares.

This came at a cost however as AIR MILES did away with their reward charts where one could receive outsized value on some flights redemptions of 20 or more cents per mile. This brought disappointment to many Canadians, especially those up north where cash prices for flights are always high and the fixed reward chart pricing provided great value to redeem for those flights. In the new AIR MILES Flights program this great value went away as for the most part almost all flight redemption offered a value between 9.5 and 10.5 cents, with some coming in lower than that and others slightly higher. It really made the travel option less appealing when you knew you could 10.5 cents via the Cash Miles option and not have to wait until you earned enough miles for a flight.

Now BMO states they will be improving it and hopefully they do where there can be more value per mile where redeeming for travel can make sense. More importantly, I do really hope they make the one improvement the flights program really needs and that is a miles+cash option. Almost all other reward programs allow you to still redeem for travel even if you don’t have enough points or miles. You basically redeem your points as a partial payment towards your flight and then cover whatever is remaining with cash (Well, your credit card). This would be a huge improvement to the program that would have it catch up and actually compete with many of the other programs like Scene+, Avion Rewards, Aeroplan and more.

They also mention “more ways to book travel”. Could this actually mean an option to book travel with anyone and then redeem your miles against the charge if you happen to have a BMO AIR MILES card? That would be amazing but it doesn’t really line up with the premise of the program. That would simply make it the same as the BMO Rewards program and I don’t believe they would want that overlap unless there is a longer term idea to combine the programs.

The new option to earn more miles by receipt scanning sounds like it will be like Caddle and Checkout 51 (who know maybe one of these apps will be the back end for AIR MILES) or maybe it will be like NeilsenIQ’s Homescan. This will roll out in Atlantic Canada first and then follow in other regions in Canada.

They also state new earn and burn opportunities with top Canadian brands which to me sounds like an expansion to AIR MILES Shops online shopping portal. Perhaps it will become more like Aeroplan’s eStore which offers both earn and burn options for many online retailers.

Wrapping it up

AIR MILES has officially lived to see another day with BMO completing the acquisition of this beleaguered program. We’ve waited nearly two months for this news and now the waiting game will continue to see if BMO will live up to their promises and reinvent the AIR MILES program! All in all though this is great news as the uncertainty of the program surviving has been alleviated.

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