Qantas tackles $1.3bn travel credit stockpile left over from pandemic

The airline will establish a dedicated concierge service to help customers use $1.3bn worth of travel credits amid warnings they are ‘not being used rapidly’.

The airline is making an effort to help customers use their travel credits with $1.3bn still left over from the Covid pandemic. Picture: David Gray/Getty Images for Destination New South Wales

Qantas will establish a dedicated team in its call centres to help customers use their travel credits by the end of next year, with $1.3bn still left over from mass flight cancellations during the Covid pandemic.

The figure was revealed in the airline’s full year results on Thursday, with UBS analyst Andre Fromyhr noting travel credits were “not being used rapidly” after coming down from $1.6bn.

Difficulties using the credits have been among the many bugbears of customers since travel restarted, with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission continuing to investigate.

Although Qantas CEO Alan Joyce insisted the credits were being used to book flights at a rate of $80 million a month, the airline did recognise more effort was needed to assist customers.

Chief financial officer Vanessa Hudson said Qantas would be communicating to customers and reminding them to use their credits before the end of 2023, and providing “new ways of accessing that online”.

“In the coming weeks, we’ll be putting on a dedicated concierge phone number where customers can call a dedicated team in our contact centres for help if they need it,” Ms Hudson said.

She said across the entire pandemic period, Qantas had issued $2bn worth of travel credits, $1bn of which had been used.

Mr Joyce said it was possible for Qantas to provide such a service because of the improved performance of call centres following a staffing boost.

“Our call centres are performing unbelievably well, better than pre-Covid, so we can dedicate a team in order to do this and make it easier for everybody,” Mr Joyce said.

“I will point out we’re one of the only airlines that has done this. A lot of airlines out there haven’t made it this easy.”

He said customers of “many of our competitors” had lost their ability to use travel credits, in reference to Virgin Australia which was refusing to replace credits with refunds for people living in countries where the airline no longer flew.

“This is a great customer service initiative Qantas has put in, and we’re pretty proud that we’re making it easy for people to use that and it will get easier,” said Mr Joyce.

There was continuing consternation among travellers however that when redeeming their credits, they were offered more expensive flights than if they were paying cash.

One Qantas customer who did not want to be named said he was initially charged a “change fee” of $99 when he recently tried to use a travel credit for $615.21.

When he contacted the call centre to complain, he was told the fee was an error and they would book the flight for him.

“The price then quoted by the call centre was over $100 more than what was quoted on the website at the very same moment,” said the customer.

Qantas said the terms and conditions for travel credits were dependent on whether the airline had cancelled the flight or the customer.

In cases where the customer cancelled, travel credits could only be used on a new booking of equal or higher value.

The ACCC declined to provide any details about the progress of its investigation into Qantas’s management of travel credits after previously seeking information from affected customers.

An update was expected in the watchdog’s next airline monitoring report, due in September.