Barclays launched the Arrival Premier in April 4th, 2018. The reception to the card so far has been underwhelming, so much so that Barclays has reintroduced the Arrival+ with a 60,000 point sign up bonus. There are several problems with the Premier card:
- It has no sign up bonus
- Miles don’t transfer to airline partners at a 1:1 ratio
- It has a $150 annual fee
Barclays has somewhat addressed the last point by announcing that the $150 annual fee will be waived the first year and it doesn’t look like this will be a limited time promotion. View From The Wing is reporting that they will also be adding two new airline partners by the end of July (Finnair & Alitalia). I don’t think either airline partner addition is particularly appealing, but it looks like they will continue to add airline partners (they had previously added Aeroplan). Unfortunately those changes aren’t enough to make this card attractive. If Barclays is serious about this card and they are (signing travel partners isn’t cheap) then they need to do more before consumers consider this card en mass. Here’s what I’d do:
- Travel partners transfer at a rate of 1:1. The value proposition of a card needs to be simple to understand, having some partners that transfer at a rate of 1.4:1 and others that transfer to 1.7:1 is needlessly complicated and confusing.
- Add a sign up bonus. Getting consumers to sign up without a carrot is always difficult, you can actually lower your customer acquisition costs by adding a sign up bonus.
- Keep the annual fee waived. This touches on the above point but it’s easier to market a $150 annual fee card when that fee is waived in the first year of card membership.
- Remove the spending bonus. The above isn’t cheap, so remove the spending bonus (15,000 points for $15,000 in spend & an additional 10,000 points for an additional $10,000 spend). I’d replace it with some other benefit to help justify the annual fee but with a high breakage rate (e.g spend $x and get a travel credit)
In reality what is going to happen is that Barclays is going to pretend that waiving the annual fee and adding some useless transfer partners is enough. When the sign up numbers continue to be abysmal they will tinker with the card again by adding a small sign up bonus. Barclays should just remember that first impressions last.
