What is Club AvantiA highly valuable scheme that was missing something…
Avanti West Coast’s rewards programme isn’t well known, but it offers exceptional value for customers, whether you’re travelling just once or taking their trains regularly. The problem with the scheme was it was missing something quite important. Today, that missing element has been launched.
What is Club Avanti
It’s the frequent traveller scheme run by Avant West Coast, the train operator that runs the service between London (Euston) and the North West and into Scotland. Avanti is your main choice if you travel between Manchester and London, but they also cover Birmingham, all the way out to Holyhead in Wales, plus the Lake District, Blackpool and up to Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Avanti took over from Virgin West Coast in 2019. Initially, there was little difference between the two operators, but Avanti has made the service their own over time. The most significant change, for me, is the Standard Premium ticket, a first-class seat without the first-class service (or price).
Club Avanti is also a differentiator. Virgin West Coast had no loyalty scheme, and Club Avanti has real and tangible benefits, even if you travel just once.
I wrote more about the Club Avanti scheme a few months ago.
The scheme is free to join, and you will get immediate value from it.
It is absolutely worth joining, even if you plan to just travel once.
What are the perks of Club Avanti?
- On joining, you’ll get a free hot drink onboard (you have a year to use this)
- Early boarding notifications at Euston
- 10% off food and drink onboard (use as many times as you like
New members will be classed as “Silver”. Take more journeys and you’ll move up to Gold and Platinum. I found it easy to get to the top tier as I book travel for my colleagues. Tickets you book for other people will count as qualifying journeys, assuming they fit the general criteria for qualifying journeys (listed below).
That means that if you look after the travel arrangements for a group of people, it should be relatively easy to jump up to Gold or Platinum.
When you reach Gold, you’ll get a free, Standard Premium return. This is a valuable reward, and the voucher will last 365 days from the day you earned it. You must book at least seven days in advance, and you can change the reward ticket once upto one hour before departure.
I think the terms are reasonable. I’ve found the reward tickets useful when booking last-minute-ish travel for work, as the cost of booking a regular ticket rises significantly as you get closer to the travel date.
Reaching Platinum gives you a free First Class return ticket, with the same terms as the Standard Premium.
I found the process of booking reward journeys to be very easy.
What is a qualifying journey with Club Avant?
The scheme does have some rules on what journeys qualify and thus move you up through the tiers. It’s pretty simple; journeys must be over 75 miles, and the 75 miles must be on an Avanti train. It can be a ticket that has multiple legs, of which Avanti is just one.
You also must book the journey directly with Avanti via the website or the app.
What was Club Avanti missing?
The scheme had no way for members to see their progress. As you took more journeys and earned more rewards, you would get an update email. This was fine, but it felt like having a dashboard was a normal part of being a member of a rewards scheme. It just felt like something important was missing.
Club Avanti has launched a members’ portal
As of today you can now access the Club Avanti members portal. It’s hidden away in the My Account and then the Club Avanti section of the site. The full URL for the portal is https://www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk/train-tickets/account-club-avanti
Logging in using your Avanti account details gives you access to it.
What the new portal tells you:
- Your tier level
- How many qualifying journeys you’ve had
- The journey history, useful to see if any tickets did not count.
- A list of all rewards, how long you have to use them AND the codes to access them
- Your membership renewal date.
The portal also confirms your benefits, including the “Early Boarding Notification” SMS that is incredibly useful at Euston.
How important is the new portal?
Previously you were updated by Avanti over email. When you reached a level where a free Standard Premium or First Class ticket was awarded then the code was sent to you. When it come to actually using the reward, you had to trawl through emails to find it. This wasn’t ideal.
Equally, staying on top of how many journeys you’d had meant looking back at older emails. None of this suggested that Avanti took their rewards scheme seriously.
The new portal changes that. It’s attractive and easy to use, and it ticks every box.
