Airline loyalty programmes are famously big business – but how much do you actually understand about how they work?

It should be a straightforward process – picking a credit card, spending at the right times and being rewarded with points to redeem for a dream trip – but it’s not always that simple.

Point.me, an airline point concierge service which assists with reward bookings, has attempted to lay bare the world’s best airline rewards programmes.

It’s released a report, ranking 62 of the world’s airlines, drawing on information released by the companies, as well as years of its own data.

The company considered a number of factors including redemption rates, ease of booking and customer service quality.

It revealed that the world’s top-ranking rewards programme is Air France and KLM’s joint Flying Blue.

It came in first place thanks to its ease of booking and the relatively low cost of redemptions, as well as the ability to book on the companies’ partner airlines, within the SkyTeam alliance.

How do airline reward schemes work?

Airline rewards or frequent flyer programmes allow passengers to collect points as they spend which can be redeemed as discounts on travel.

You might think that the majority of the points travellers earn and spend on flights come from flying – but that’s actually not the case.

While you can collect points based on distance flown by signing up to a specific airline’s programme, many carriers partner with credit card issuers to offer points on a wide range of travel-related spends.

The majority of reward points are earned through such partnerships, meaning that some airlines earn significantly more through credit card deals than they actually do by operating flights.

It isn’t just airlines who are the winners, though.

The fact that most of those points are earned through credit card programmes means that  travellers don’t have to be frequent flyers to earn points they can leverage for travel.

How were the best rewards programmes selected?

If you spend wisely – and make sure to pay your credit card off in time – the rewards can earn you serious discounts.

As with everything, though, there are downsides and, for ordinary travellers without specific knowledge, it’s often near-impossible to decipher which programme is right for you.

To make things a little simpler, Point.me looked at various criteria, including how easy it is to earn points from non-flying methods – think dining and shopping, package holidays, transfer partners and transfer bonuses.

They also examined the value it’s possible to get for those points, how easy it is to book an award flight and the frequency of award availability.

On a more complex level, there’s flexibility in routing rules to consider – that is if you can book a stopover, for example, as well as change fees and policies – and customer service quality when it comes to booking.

Here’s what they found out.

Which airlines have the best rewards programmes?

Flying Blue, the loyalty programme for Air France and the Dutch flag-carrier KLM, proved that Europe knows what it’s doing when it comes to rewarding customers.

Point.me says the programme has exceptional performance across the board, receiving top marks in nearly every category.

Recently, Flying Blue has made significant adjustments to its loyalty strategy, which has led to good redemption rates and extensive partnerships that make it easy to earn miles – even without ever boarding an Air France or KLM flight – as well as flexible routing rules that make it easy to reach destinations worldwide.

Fairly unusually, customers are able to transfer points from all of the major credit card points currencies to Flying Blue, which makes it relatively easy to amass enough points for a flight even if your spending is spread across loyalty programmes.

Following Flying Blue is Air Canada’s Aeroplan programme.

Revamped in 2020, the Canadian company offers solid availability on partner airlines as well as generous routing rules which make it easier for travellers living in non-hub cities to use its miles.

Points from most of the major credit card programmes can also be transferred to Aeroplan.

Point.me did find that there were a number of challenges with booking some flights online, including long hold times, and slightly less impressive customer service than other programmes.

United MileagePlus, the US-based programme, may have received some negative attention recently for changes that make it less lucrative for very frequent flyers to be loyal to the airline. But Point.me found that the overall structure also makes MileagePlus one of the best for non-loyal or less-frequent travellers.

Points can be transferred from a number of other loyalty programmes and it was found that MileagePlus miles are easy to earn through a host of partner and co-branded credit cards.

Point.me also added that the company has implemented dynamic award pricing in a way that can actually be beneficial to casual travellers – particularly those tied to school schedules and national holidays.

Two more European programmes made the top five

Back in Europe, two UK companies came in joint fourth place – British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

British Airways was praised for the extensive changes to its Executive Club programme in the past year. The expansion of its ‘Reward Flight Saver’ concept to long-haul flights, which allows travellers to redeem points at attractive rates with vastly reduced fees compared to prior versions of the programme, was hailed by Point.me.

As well as offering the ability to transfer points from other programmes, the Executive Club charges separately for each ‘segment’ on an itinerary – with pricing based on the distance of each flight.

Simply put, that means it’s possible to find solid options to and from hub cities. It does fall down, however, on connecting itineraries, especially when combined with hefty carrier-driven surcharges on non-Reward Flight Saver trips.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club has similar pros and cons.

It was found to have some of the best economy redemption rates of all programmes Point.me evaluated, as well as a commitment to making seats available for award redemptions on every flight.

While the Club also partners with a wide range of credit card reward programmes, carrier-imposed fuel surcharges are extremely high in premium cabins, which is a black mark against Virgin.

Also, Point.me found that some partner bookings need to be made over the phone – and the Flying Club website doesn’t always make it clear when this is the case.

It was praised, though, for its keenness to offer space on flights that travellers tend to be most interested in – think economy flights from New York to London and back for under 9,000 points per person each way, with availability for entire families or larger groups, as opposed to individual seats only.

Which other European airlines offer the best loyalty programmes?

While Point.me tended to focus on the benefits of the programmes for Americans, it also focussed on a wider variety of companies’ reward schemes within Europe.

As well as the aforementioned Air France / KLM’s Flying Blue, British Airways Executive Club and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, Aer Lingus’ AerClub and Finnair Plus rounded up the top five best programmes in Europe.

Up next was Aegean Miles+Bonus, which was praised for offering expanded availability on its own airline.

Scandinavian SAS Eurobonus was found to offer availability on its partner airlines, while Miles & More, by Lufthansa Group, was discovered to have impressive ease of booking.

Iberia Plus and Tap Miles&Go both make it straightforward to redeem points on a flight booking, rounding out the top 10 in Europe.

Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles and Air Europa Suma both scored fairly averagely on the global scale but, in Europe, came in 11th and 12th place respectively – meaning they offer a number of perks other companies can’t.

Blazing heat, prolonged drought and heavy downpours: Spain’s chaotic weather has made tourists think twice about visiting the Mediterranean country in 2024.

With temperatures soaring to 40°C in some places, the lure of sunshine has started to become a deterrent.

The other half of the ‘sol y playa’ tourism model is also at risk as the climate changes – Spain’s beaches are starting to disappear due to rising sea levels and extreme weather.

“We observed that there are many beaches in Spain already affected by erosion, particularly when there are strong waves during winter storms,” says Markus Donat, who co-leads the Climate Variability and Change Group within Barcelona Supercomputing Center’s (BSC) Earth Sciences Department.

During storms at Easter, some Barcelona beaches faced unprecedented sand loss of up to 25 metres in width.

Experts warn that this could become a worrying trend – with potentially devastating impacts on Spain’s thriving tourism industry.

Why are Spain’s beaches disappearing?

Climate change is expected to accelerate the frequency and violence of storms in the future.

“The biggest problem is the greater frequency of maritime storms, whose waves affect the first line of the coast and cause huge damage to beaches and coastal facilities, such as marinas and promenades,” explains Jorge Olcina, professor of geography at the University of Alicante.

This could lead to the beaches shrinking, with a loss of the usable sand available for holidaymakers.

“This problem requires significant economic investments every three or four years to repair the beaches and promenades,” says Jorge.

The Spanish government has said for decades that the country’s coastline suffers from the “generalised process of coastal regression”, and has invested millions into replacing sand on degraded beaches. But in the long term, it warns it will not be possible to keep up with requests from all the municipalities that request such help.

And it’s far from over. “Some conservative models assume that the sea level will rise from half a metre to one metre by the end of the century,” says Markus. “However, these estimates do not include some factors that are not well understood – for example, the impact of the melting ice of the Antarctic. So this could increase predicted increases substantially.”

Which Spanish beaches are most vulnerable to coastal erosion?

Some Spanish regions are more vulnerable than others – among them, Catalonia.

Across northeastern Spain, rising sea levels and winter storms have been eating away at the shoreline. A 2017 report by the regional government suggests that 164 km of the region’s coastline – out of a total of 218 km studied – is at high or very high risk of erosion. Half of the beaches are expected to “deteriorate”.

In Barcelona, whose artificial beaches were installed 30 years ago when the city was hosting the 1992 Olympic Games, the situation is even more critical.

Eight out of nine beaches are at high risk from sea storms. The city already warns that some could disappear entirely.

“Sant Sebastià could almost disappear in the worst-case scenarios, while the others could suffer reductions of between 30 per cent and 46 per cent,” Barcelona City Hall’s 2018-2030 Climate Plan reads.

Of the 700,000 cubic metres of sand sent by the Spanish government to the coast of Barcelona province in 2010, 70 per cent has since disappeared. The city estimates that 30,000 cubic metres of sand are washed away every year.

Looking ahead, Barcelona has gathered a group of experts to study the future of the beaches. In the meantime, the practice of replacing sand is increasingly being seen as a waste of money and damaging to the environment.

How will coastal erosion impact tourism in Spain?

Coastal erosion could have alarming consequences for Spanish tourism, which today accounts for nearly 13 per cent of both GDP and employment in Spain, and is heavily dependent on beaches.

The European Travel Commission (ETC) already reported a 10 per cent decrease in tourist frequency in the Mediterranean in 2023 compared to the previous year, due to climate change and extreme weather events.

And Spain is set to be one of the most severely impacted EU countries going forward, according to a report on the ‘Regional impact of climate change on European tourism demand’ published by the European Commission last year.

In a scenario of 3°C warming from pre-industrial levels, tourist demand could fall by nearly 10 per cent – or more than 15 per cent in a scenario at 4°C, the report states.

Last year, the UN warned that the world is on track for nearly 3°C of warming under current climate plans – far beyond the safe threshold of 1.5°C set in the Paris climate agreement.

But for now, visitor numbers aren’t a concern, as recent overtourism protests from Barcelona to Malaga illustrate.

“Rising sea levels, for now, have no hard effect,” says Jorge. “On the contrary, we are experiencing a boom in the arrival of tourists.”

Spain welcomed a record 53.4 million international tourists up to 31 July – a 12 per cent increase on last year. This pumped €71.1 billion into the economy, according to data from Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE).

‘The heat is becoming unbearable’

Yet Spain’s tourism industry faces the looming threat of climate change on other fronts.

“The biggest problem remains the constant loss of thermal comfort due to the increase of tropical nights, with temperatures above 20ºC. So the heat is becoming unbearable,” Jorge says.

This could force tourist destinations to make investments in urban design, such as adding more trees and water fountains in the streets, the experts say.

In the meantime, tourists are already starting to turn to the cooler northern regions of the country, long shunned.

Between 2019 and 2023 – a record-hot year in Spain – tourism spending increased the most in the least hot regions of Spain, research from Spanish financial services company CaixaBank, published in January, shows.

It remains to be seen whether the trend will continue.

Bali has long been a tourist honeypot, but the growing influx of visitors is putting pressure on local infrastructure and endangering the environment.

Concerned overtourism will become unmanageable, Indonesian authorities have brought in a temporary suspension on new hotel builds in some areas of the island.

The measure hopes to check overdevelopment and reduce strain on local services.

Since the removal of pandemic restrictions, tourism has made a swift recovery. In the first half of 2024, 2.9 million foreign visitors arrived via Bali airport, according to Indonesia’s statistics bureau.

Bali hotel ban may remain in place for a decade

The moratorium will apply to the construction of new hotels, villas and nightclubs in some areas of Bali.

Authorities have not confirmed how long the measure will be in place, but senior minister Luhut Pandjaitan was quoted by news website Detik as saying it could last for up to a decade.

The number of hotels in Bali has risen from 507 in 2019 to 541 in 2023.

Bali: ‘A 10 per cent increase could push us into overtourism’

As tourism has rebounded post-pandemic, Bali’s services have been feeling the strain.

Last month, tourism minister Sandiaga Uno warned that the situation in south Bali was verging on overtourism.

Residents are growing frustrated by the increased traffic and irresponsible behaviour of tourists.

Videos have emerged of visitors taking nude pictures at sacred sites, stripping naked and gatecrashing temple ceremonies, and flashing while riding a motorbike.

Around 200,000 foreigners live in Bali, which is driving unemployment and crime rates.

Bali is also now a popular place for digital nomads who base themselves on the island for months at a time.

In February, authorities introduced a tourist tax of 150,000 rupiah (€8.15) for foreign visitors in a bid to preserve its culture.

Officials also say they are planning a rail connection between the airport and popular tourist spots to ease pressure on heavily trafficked roads.

“A 10 per cent increase could push us into [overtourism] territory,” Uno was quoted as saying by national news agency Antara.

“We must avoid a situation like Barcelona, where tourists become public enemies.”