0:00 - Introduction to Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program 2:56 - on key milestones 4:47 - on BolBol Youth Program 5:37 - on gamification and personalisation 11:42 - on partnerships 13:19 - on how to stay ahead of the competition 14:26 - advice to younger self 16:13 - Magic wand
GLO0:00 – Introduction to Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program
2:56 – on key milestones
4:47 – on BolBol Youth Program
5:37 – on gamification and personalisation
11:42 – on partnerships
13:19 – on how to stay ahead of the competition
14:26 – advice to younger self
16:13 – Magic wand
Read full transcript below.
00:00
GLO: We’re at the World Travel Market in London. And it’s a great pleasure to have Bahadir Durak, Head of Pegasus Airlines’ BolBol loyalty program, with me.
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here. My name is Bahadir Durak. I’m an industrial engineer with a master’s degree in data science and a PhD in operations research. This is why I spent 15 years in the IT and research and development departments. Last year, Pegasus made significant changes to its organisational structure. It combined data analytics and loyalty programs under a single department and decided to manage these two teams together. We believe that loyalty programs and data analytics are strongly linked: loyalty programs create valuable data, and data analytics uses this valuable data to create valuable insights and strategies to improve customer engagement and loyalty programs. I took charge of this department last year. Our BolBol program was launched in 2008 as a cobranded credit card initiative. At that time, we had a financial partner that supported the loyalty program. For three years, we continued to work with this financial institution, but after the third year, in 2011, we decided to create a separate loyalty program. We did not change its name; we continued with Pegasus Plus, but we created an independent loyalty program, and we terminated the agreement with the financial institution. In 2018, we restructured our loyalty program and created Pegasus BolBol. Currently, we have 10 million members in our Pegasus BolBol loyalty program, and we are happy about it. It’s a significant milestone for our loyalty program. And we created some new features last year, such as gamification. We are continuously looking to improve our loyalty program.
2:56
GLO: Before we delve deeper into gamification and your mobile app, can you tell us a little bit about the key milestones for your program in the last two, or three years? And where do you see the opportunities in the coming years? And it’s quite interesting that you said your background is in data analytics. Airline loyalty programs historically used to be very archaic, and now this is changing completely. It would be great to hear your thoughts on that.
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: As I mentioned, gamification has been a critical milestone for our loyalty program. We have been using gamification for a year, so it’s almost a new concept for us. We also simplified our redemption structure to make it clearer and more understandable for our customers. And we introduced a new sub-loyalty program, BolBol Youth, for our young members. Our members who are under the age of 24 can become members of BolBol Youth and get some extra benefits. These are the key milestones for our loyalty program in the last couple of years. For the next two years, we want to use more data analytics and AI to improve our loyalty program. We want to create a more personalised loyalty program. So, we will initiate AI in our loyalty programs to improve BolBol and make it more personalised.
4:47
GLO: You mentioned your BolBol Youth Program. This is very interesting because you are already approaching the next generation of customers. Can you tell us a little bit more about your Youth program?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: We initiated our BolBol Youth program at the end of last year and we have more than 100,000 members today. If you are between the ages of 12 and 24, you can be a member of BolBol Youth as well. You get some extra benefits, like extra baggage or free flex, to change or cancel your ticket without paying a fee. These are important benefits for young people.
5:37
GLO: Yes, it’s seamless travel; it’s the customer experience and how you hook your next generation of customers, and they keep coming back again and again.
If we now look at the BolBol gamification aspect, you already said it was launched about a year ago. How was your initial experience, and how did it evolve? Have you seen any difference in the perception of your members depending on the region where they’re from?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: Gamification contributes significantly to our BolBol program—more than we expected at the beginning. Almost half of the members who play our game were previously inactive members. So the BolBol game plays an important role in converting our inactive members to active ones. We are happy about these results because that was one of our motivators to introduce gamification. We didn’t observe any significant differences between regions or cultures. We are also happy about it because we want to reach all of the regions and all of our members. The game is available through the app across all regions but not on the website because we want to motivate our customers to use our application.
7:25
GLO: If you look at your customer engagement levels and your KPIs, what was your experience, and has the engagement rate increased?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: As I mentioned, almost half of the members who play the game were previously inactive members, and among those members, 15% use their points to buy something from Pegasus—a plane ticket or an ancillary. So, it’s a significant KPI for us and shows us the power of gamification: to convert and transform our inactive members into active members. Redemption rates are another significant KPI where we observed a significant improvement: our redemption rates improved by almost 40% after implementing gamification. Through the game, our members gain reward points that expire within three months. They don’t want to lose these free points. So, they are motivated to use those points. And the only way to use the reward points is to buy something from Pegasus. That’s why it contributes to our redemption rates, and we observe some increase in their flight frequency. Even slight increases are important for us because they may contribute to our revenue in the long term.
9:05
GLO: I believe it’s not just the revenue and the redemption, but the brand recognition, right?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: Yes. One of our motivators is to improve brand awareness because many people participate in this game, participate in challenges, get reward points and share their awareness with their friends on their social media accounts. This improves our brand awareness, and we can reach new people with the help of this organic sharing. We can also get new members with the help of this motivation.
9:59
GLO: It’s a great way to get your brand out there. And I must admit, I’m one of your gamers. I’ve been playing the mobile game weekly for the last six months or so. And it keeps making me come back again and again. And I wonder what’s next. You already talked about AI and personalisation. But what’s next in your gamification?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: We want to create more personalised gamification. In fact, we want to create a more personalised loyalty program because our customers have different behaviours, different expectations, and different needs. So, it’s better to make it personalised to reach all of our members. If you use a common challenge, for instance, let’s say fly 10 times and get a reward ticket, it’s not meaningful for all our members because some of our members fly three times a year and some fly 15 times a year. So, it’s not meaningful for both groups. To cover all of our members, we have to be more personalised. That’s why we will initiate AI models in our loyalty program to make it more personalised and reach each individual member.
11:13
GLO: So this means personalised offers personalised travel..
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: Yes, personalised challenges and even personalised rewards should be possible in a personalised loyalty program.
11:28
GLO: Is this something you are planning for next year or in the next couple of years?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: Our objective is to implement personalisation in the next year, but it may take a few years.
11:42
GLO: And let me ask you: What’s your approach to partnerships, as you’re not part of an alliance? You already mentioned you started the journey with Pegasus BolBol through a partnership with a financial institution. What is Pegasus Airlines’ approach to partnerships?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: I believe an aviation loyalty partnership is one of the most important things because it creates an alternative way to earn points for our customers. Also, we have partnerships with accommodation partners and car rental companies to provide a more seamless travel experience for our customers. Also, we have some other partnerships with reputable companies to increase our brand awareness and get new members. So, partnerships are really important.
12:36
GLO: And are there any regions that excite you and where you’re looking to expand—not just in terms of routes you serve but also in terms of gaining new members and forming new partnerships?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: Europe is our top focus as a region because most of our flights are to European countries. But there are some European cities that we haven’t served yet. And there are some other European countries we want to increase our flight frequency to. The topmost region that we focus on is Europe in the near future.
13:19
GLO: The airline industry is notoriously competitive, with all the different airlines competing for members and flyers. What do you do at Pegasus to stay ahead of the game?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: We’re mostly present in the European region and the competition in Europe is really high and it’s difficult to compete with other airlines sometimes. To maintain our competitive edge, we will focus more on gamification. It will differentiate us from other loyalty programs. We will focus on expanding our partnership network because our partners also contribute to our loyalty program and members’ experiences. Also, we want to create a more personalised loyalty program. As I said, this will be the main differentiator among other loyalty programs in Europe.
14:26
GLO: Bahadir, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your journey with the Pegasus loyalty program. Before we conclude our interview, it has become a kind of tradition at Global Loyalty Organisation to ask two personal questions to our interviewees. The first question I would like to ask you is, if you were looking back and if you were able to speak to your younger self starting out in the loyalty industry, knowing what you know now and having experienced the launch of the BolBol program, the gamification, etc., which advice would you give your younger self?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: I would say “be open to change and innovation” because aviation is a dynamic industry. And loyalty is not a one-time thing. It’s changing because customers’ behaviours, their needs, and even generations are changing. And technology is changing as well. So, everything is changing. We have to adapt to all of these changes at the same time. So, I will say that first, be open to change and innovation. Second, I will say “expand your network” because partnerships are also one of the critical aspects of aviation loyalty. So, in order to create good relationships with other partners, it’s better to keep our network wider. These two things are important, and I will recommend these two things to my younger self.
16:13
GLO: Thank you. That’s great advice. My next question is: Imagine you had a magic wand and could invent any loyalty feature or any product you would want without any budget restrictions, what would you invent?
Bahadir Durak, Pegasus BolBol Loyalty Program: I would invent a personal assistant, a digital personal assistant that recommends almost everything: where to go, when to go and when I go somewhere to act as a city guide—to recommend a restaurant, what to eat, what to see etc. So, I would invent an AI-based super assistant.
17:19
GLO: I think we might not be far off from it, given the way AI has evolved in the past few years. I really look forward to seeing you implement those new changes to the BolBol program in the near future. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to interview you at the World Travel Market in London. And thank you very much for also being part of our panel, and we hope to see you again next year.
