Australia is now going down the ‘USA route‘ of rewarding vaccinated citizens for their efforts. Rather than mayors offering burgers, chips and cash, however, here we have Qantas offering pricked passengers the chance to win free flights for a year.
Qantas boss Alan Joyce has called for more Australian companies to introduce vaccine incentives.
As 9news.com.au reports, Qantas is encouraging passengers to get the jab by offering several deals. These will include unlimited travel for a year for 10 fortunate families, as part of a scheme that will launch in July.
“We are looking at giving 1000 points flight vouchers, credits and we are going to offer ten mega prizes, at least one for each state and territory, where a family of four get unlimited travel on the Qantas and Jetstar network, anywhere in the network for a year,” Mr Joyce told Today.
Qantas is working with hotel business Accor Group, which Joyce said will offer a million points and free accommodation to the chosen families.
“We are trying our best to help with this rollout – it will be retrospective and will include anyone who has already been vaccinated and will apply to anybody that is vaccinated until the end of 2021,” Joyce said.
“I’m encouraging a ‘Team Australia’ moment where every corporate out there helps with this vaccine rollout and to reward people that have had the vaccine.”
Mr Joyce also commented on a number of other issues of interest to Australians, such as travel bubbles and the resumption of international flights.
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“We are still planning to be ready at the end of this calendar year [to resume international flights],” Joyce told Today. “We are activating the aircraft, we are training our crew, the government has given us a support package to do that and have asked us to be ready.”
“I’m hopeful by the time we get to July-August we will have some certainty on which markets will open and when they will open, so we can give certainty to our travelling public and to our people about when they are going to be back at work.”
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On the topic of travel bubbles, Joyce said Qantas had seen demand from Australians wanting to travel to New Zealand running at double pre-COVID levels.
He also related: “We’re hoping for the Pacific islands – Fiji, Vanuatu – there’s potentially a lot of destinations that we could be operating to,” as well as talking about how vaccine rates can influence certain destinations’ eligibility.
“A few months ago I thought maybe Singapore, Taiwan (and) Japan would be the first cabs off the rank, but with the great progress that’s been made in the US and the UK you may actually see those markets opening up before the rest, because the vaccine rollout’s been so successful in both countries.”
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See more of the latest Australian travel news below.