AwardWallet President Jeff Bianco
AwardWallet is a free online tool that helps travelers keep track of their award program points (such as frequent flyer miles). With all the different award program sites listed, it’s a snap to just click on the airline or hotel name, and the auto login takes the user right to the respective award program site desired, and automatically logs in said user. Aggregating all those different hotel points and frequent flyer miles into one site is incredibly useful for those of us (read: me) that are less than organized! Todd Mera and Alexi Vereschaga, co-founders of AwardWallet, answered some questions in this interview, along with Jeff Bianco, President of the handy travel awards aggregator website.
When did you create AwardWallet, and what was your inspiration?
In 2004, after traveling extensively, Todd Mera decided that there had to be a better was to track all his miles and reward programs’ statuses. Along with co-founder Alexi Vereschaga, they created a simple and reliable website so that travelers wouldn’t have to manually enter their various points and awards on a spreadsheet. It all started with a handful of airline and hotel programs, and today AwardWallet tracks over 340 loyalty award programs, tracking 10.9 billion points representing 218 million dollars.
What would you say are frequent flyers’ most common complaint about redeeming miles? And, does AwardWallet address this?
Many traveler are simply overwhelmed with managing their multiple frequent flyer accounts. If a user could limit the number of programs they are enrolled in to two or three, it would make managing their programs easier. However, since not every airline flies to every city, passengers are often required to fly with multiple airlines, Our members average between six and seven loyalty programs. If you are also tracking your spouse’s or child’s accounts, add another six for each! AwardWallet offers members the ability to view all their (and their family’s) frequent flyer accounts on one page.
Many airlines have a limited amount of award seats available and oftentimes the exact dates you’d like to fly are not available. However, with some flexibility in your schedule and persistent award searches, you should be able to find a good award ticket. Also, if there is no availability on your choice airline be sure to see who they are partnered with. Some of the biggest partner alliances are Star Alliance, SkyTeam, and OneWorld.
What does AwardWallet do to ensure the security of users’ information, and to help users understand that their private information is, indeed, secure?
Sensitive data is encrypted in our secure database. Besides using the secure https protocol when transferring data, we give users the ability to store passwords in their computers, in a “cookie.” Now, in our opinion, there are advantages to secure this data in our database (our servers are most likely better protected than yours). The service is very secure and has been ever since we launched in 2004, and AwardWallet is hosted in the USA.
What does AwardWallet do to make it a better site than your competitors?
There are a few websites that, in theory, offer similar services like tracking point balances. However, we at AwardWallet pride ourselves in having the largest number of programs users can track, travel plans automatically added to users’ profiles, and we have the most efficient customer service. We also have an iPhone and Android app. We are the most praised and popular loyalty rewards management website on Flyertalk.com and Milepoint.com.
Where would you like to see AwardWallet go on the next few years? And, what are you doing to help achieve that goal?
Just a year ago we at AwardWallet thought hitting the 50,000 member mark would be one of our greatest achievements. However, we now expect 100,000 members by the end of 2011. Recently, we’ve developed an API that allows AwardWallet to track loyalty information for users. This API gives our partners the ability to utilize rewards information of their own users, for their own needs. For example, one of our clients is Points.com with their entire user base of millions of users. AwardWallet plans on expanding in this area of business to business relationships. last, we’re very focused on tracking and aggregating loyalty point information. We plan to track over 500 loyalty programs by the end of 2011.
AwardWallet is seeing growth in the travel website market that is surprising to its founders, but entirely deserved. What with various kudos bestowed upon AwardWallet by various reputable sources (Wall Street Journal, for example), I’d expect much continued success in the future. Thanks, guys!
I never used Award Wallet before but I think I have heard of it by now. I will look at it now because I do have rewards points at at least three different hotel chains.