Virgin Atlantic is to relaunch its social travel community site, www.vtravelled.com, by rewarding Flying Club members using video gaming techniques.
As one of the first airlines to launch its own online community, Virgin Atlantic will partner with social gaming experts Lithium, as it plans to engage with its 1.8 million Flying Club members. The airline will introduce the ability to earn real currency in the form of miles in addition to the more usual virtual rewards.
Virgin Atlantic has already developed schemes such as Drive Thru Check-in and safety videos. This initiative will take the fundamental thinking and technology behind social gaming and develop it to allow loyal customers and Flying Club members to be rewarded for their contributions.
Lysette Gauna, creative director at Virgin Atlantic, commented: “We want to make contributing to vtravelled as easy, enjoyable and rewarding as possible for our Flying Club members. The science behind the human behaviours in game mechanics is something that really interests us and the more we learn about it, we realise we have a great opportunity to use it to create something unique that will engage our community of travel lovers.”
Lithium chief executive Lyle Fong said: “Virgin Atlantic is leading the way by tying social media and gaming mechanics to generate real currency in the form of Flying Club miles. We look forward to partnering with it to deploy our platform in such an innovative project.”
