Airline cards help spread the word

AIRLINE schedule cards, carrying details of routes and designed to fit a traveller's wallet, provide an opportunity for hotels to align themselves closely with airlines.

Two UK hotels have taken advantage of the opportunity by advertising on the reverse side of a schedule card. The Copthorne Cardiff hotel is partnered with Manx Airlines, which uses the card to promote its winter schedule between Cardiff and Brussels.

The cards are designed and printed by a company called Airfly Communications, based in Montpellier, France, and are distributed by its airline clients. The cards, the size of a credit card, are printed and then distributed through airline reception desks, direct mail and travel agents.

The product is designed to be kept by the passenger, so it has more permanence than the traditional method of promoting airline/hotel partnerships - usually an announcement on the plane or an advertisement in an in-flight magazine.

Philip Raynsford, UK product manager at Airfly, said the Airflycard enables hotels to target markets by selecting a route.

He said the hotel can monitor the use of the card by offering a small discount to passengers who produce the card with their flight ticket.

Airlines can provide further market information to the hotel on how many passengers it carries on a particular route, how many are business travellers and how many stay at least one night in the UK.

The cost to a hotel of appearing on an Airflycard is Ffr5,500 (£632) for a minimum of 5,000 cards.