The reward program in miles gets a boost from the blockchain solution for frequent flyers

It is too much of an aggravation for the participants in the frequent flyer programs of the airlines. Travel, accumulate miles and then wait weeks to see them posted on a loyalty rewards account.

In an effort to improve the overall experience of its customers, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. turned to the blockchain to improve real-time mileage credit and other features as part of a marketing campaign "Unlock More Miles ". And the new initiative is getting results.

"Using blockchain, miles and redemption happen almost in a second," said Lawrence Fong (pictured right), Cathay Pacific's general manager of information technology. "For the marketing campaign and its capabilities, we have tripled the growth in terms of sales, the number of people and the number of customers involved in marketing campaigns have more than doubled."

Fong spoke with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), host of CUBE, the mobile livestream studio of SiliconANGLE Media, during the AWS Executive Summit in Las Vegas. He was joined by Peter Yen (pictured, at the center), Hong Kong CEO, Accenture LLP and Massimo Morin (pictured left), responsible for business development worldwide, Travel, at Amazon Web Services Inc. , and discussed the suitability of blockchain technology in the case of use and how collaboration between the partners allowed a better solution. (* Disclosure below.)

Transparency for complex transactions

The blockchain solution addressed Cathay Pacific executives because they were looking for a transparent and secure transactional database. "It's useful when you have complex, multiparty transactions where you need transparency and data integrity," explained Morin. "We want to use a reliable system that is transparent and non-modifiable, which provides a lot of value."

The blockchain-led initiative for the Asia Miles program by Cathay Pacific is the result of a three-way collaboration between AWS, Accenture and the airline. By minimizing back-office administration, members of Asia Miles can now more quickly credit travel premiums credited to their accounts.

"We had the idea, and Lawrence was brave enough to let us try," said Yen. "It's a perfect combination: the customer has the knowledge of their business, we understand the technology and we have enabling partners like Amazon, so we work together to make it happen."

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to take a look at more than SiliconANGLE and EWS Summit COVERAGE. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid multimedia partner for the AWS Executive Summit event. Neither Accenture LLP, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over the contents of theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE