United Airlines hopes to increase participation among small
and midmarket travel programs in the prepaid program. Among changes that began
in September, companies can use PassPlus with a United corporate contract, as
opposed to choosing one or the other, Americas VP of sales Jake Cefolia said.
With that, companies can use a corporate agreement to cover their general
travel population and a PassPlus account for executives and road warriors, he
said.
For the PassPlus Exec program, which offers set pricing on
refundable fares for both United and joint-venture partners Lufthansa Group and
ANA, customers now can use the program for worldwide points of origin rather
than just the U.S.
United has set the PassPlus minimum to $10,000 per traveler
for a minimum of five travelers.
The
carrier will target accounting and professional service firms, as well as
consultancies, with the new structure, Cefolia said. "We talked to
customers current and past and customers of competitors to come up with the
program, which offers a heck of a lot more benefits than any program we had
before," he said. "We have a lot of latent demand out there and have
the list of customers that have asked us about this in the past, and we're
making sure to contact them now."