Luxury Escapes has previously partnered with both Qantas and Velocity Frequent Flyer. But after removing the option to earn Velocity Points on bookings in September 2024, Luxury Escapes is now going it alone with the launch of its own loyalty program.
The Luxury Escapes Société program (which is apparently pronounced “society” despite the French spelling) bears a lot of resemblance to Australia’s frequent flyer programs. It has points and status credits, and frequent customers can earn Silver, Gold or Platinum status.
You can still redeem Velocity Points towards part or all of a Luxury Escapes booking. But when booking discounted luxury hotel and resort packages through Luxury Escapes, as well as flights, cruises and tours, you’ll now earn Société points and status credits instead of Velocity Points.
The Société loyalty program is free to join, and is separate to LuxPlus+ which is a paid subscription program. Here’s how it works…
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How Luxury Escapes Société points work
As a member of the Société loyalty program, you can earn points on all travel purchases you make through Luxury Escapes except on gift cards and service fees. This includes on hotel, cruise, tour and flight bookings, as well as any ancillaries.
You’ll be able to see how many points you’ll earn for a particular booking when browsing on the Luxury Escapes website.
You can then redeem those points towards pretty much anything on the Luxury Escapes website. You can choose to cover all or some of a booking with points – you just need to redeem at least 2,000 points at a time.
What are Luxury Escapes points worth?
Think of redeeming Luxury Escapes points like “Points Plus Pay”, rather than Classic Rewards. That’s because the number of points you would need for a particular redemption is based on the cash price of that booking.
There aren’t really many opportunities to get “outsized” value from your points, since they basically have a fixed value. However, the redemption value is slightly better when you use your points to book “Limited Time LUX Exclusive” packages, compared to “always-on” deals.
For example, you would need 69,000 points to get $200 worth of credit towards a Luxury Escapes experience, flight or regular accommodation booking. That gives the points a value of around 0.29 cents each, which is considerably less than the value of a Qantas or Velocity Point.
As another example, you could convert 114,000 Luxury Escapes points into $400 off a Limited Time LUX Exclusive flash deal. That conversion rate values each point at around 0.35 cents.
Luxury Escapes points expire after 3 years
Disappointingly, Luxury Escapes uses a points expiration policy known as “time-stamping”. Just like Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles, unused Luxury Escapes points expire after three years – regardless of whether your account is still active or not.
Additionally, any welcome bonus points that you receive will expire after just three months.
So, if you only use Luxury Escapes occasionally, there is a risk that your points might expire before you get a chance to use them. That said, you should be fine if you make a booking at least once every three years.
Since the value of these points doesn’t fluctuate much, there’s really no reason not to use points towards every new booking if you have at least 2,000 in your account. That way, as long as you buy something every three years, you shouldn’t lose your points. I guess that’s not too unreasonable, since this is a loyalty program.
How status credits work
So, that’s how the points work. But what about status credits?
Like with points, you can earn status credits for most purchases that you make through Luxury Escapes, including hotels, flights, cruises and tours. However, status credits are not earned on ancillaries such as insurance, LuxPlus+ subscriptions or optional extras.
You can see the number of status credits you’ll earn for a particular booking on the Luxury Escapes website. The rate at which you earn status credits is roughly tied to the cost of the package you book, but the earn rate is not fixed.
To give you an idea, you could expect to earn one status credit roughly for every $25-35 spent on hotels – although I did find some hotels with a lower earn rate of one status credit per $41.
Luxury Escapes Société status tiers
You can upgrade to a higher status tier, and enjoy the perks that come with that, if you earn enough status credits and stay a minimum number of nights booked through Luxury Escapes during your membership year.
Membership years in this loyalty program work exactly the same way as in Qantas Frequent Flyer: Your personal membership year is based on the month when you join. For example, if you joined in June 2025, you would have until 30 June 2026 to accumulate enough status credits to upgrade your status until the end of June 2027.
Tier qualification requirements
Just like in Qantas Frequent Flyer, everyone starts out as a Bronze member. This is what you would need to earn during a single membership year to upgrade to Silver, Gold or Platinum status:
| Tier | Status Credits required | Nights required |
|---|---|---|
| Silver | 200 | 10 |
| Gold | 600 | 20 |
| Platinum | 1,000 | 30 |
As an example, you could upgrade to Silver status by booking a nine-day tour of Egypt (earning 50,000 points, 445 status credits and 9 qualifying nights) and one night at Hotel Kurrajong Canberra (earning 2,000 points, 19 status credits and one qualifying night).
To renew your status in subsequent membership years, the same qualification criteria apply.
According to the FAQs on the Luxury Escapes website, you would generally be able to reach Silver, Gold or Platinum status respectively by spending around $5,000, $15,000 or $25,000 each year.
Société status tier benefits
So, what do you get for your efforts to upgrade to a higher status tier?
Silver benefits include:
- 2x airport lounge passes
- 2x $100 tour optional extra credits
- $200 TravelShoot voucher
- 5% travel protection discount
- Priority phone support
In addition to all Silver benefits, Gold perks include:
- 2x airport chauffeur drives
- 1x guaranteed free room upgrade
- 2x $250 tour optional extra credits (instead of $100)
- 15% travel protection discount (instead of 5%)
And on top of all the Gold perks, Platinum benefits include:
- Unlimited airport chauffeur drives
- 4x guaranteed free room upgrades (instead of 1)
- 2x $400 tour optional extra credits (instead of $250)
- 25% travel protection discount (instead of 15%)
These benefits can be used only when booking through Luxury Escapes. In general, if you have a benefit available to be used, you can apply this at the checkout at the time of booking.
There are some restrictions. For example, the airport chauffeur drives can only be used to get from your home to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth or Brisbane airports, and this benefit is only available on overseas (not domestic) holiday bookings.
The airport lounge passes can also only be redeemed at selected airports in conjunction with an international booking.
Is it worth joining the Luxury Escapes loyalty program?
It doesn’t cost anything to join Société. So if you’re booking through Luxury Escapes anyway, there’s no reason not to join!
In fact, when booking flights through Luxury Escapes, you can still earn frequent flyer points and status credits from the airline – in addition to earning Société points and status credits. (The same isn’t necessarily the case when booking hotels, though.)
Are the benefits compelling enough to make it worth using Luxury Escapes, instead of a traditional hotel loyalty program? Probably not… but if you can also get a much cheaper price or extra value-added inclusions by booking through Luxury Escapes, then that could tip the scales in favour of using this program.
The ability to earn points is nice, but based on my calculations you’re really only getting about 1-2% cashback on your spend. Better than nothing, but this is in lieu of earning Velocity Points as you would have under the previous partnership. Or earning Qantas Points when booking accommodation through Qantas Hotels, for example.
The status benefits are also nice if you’re a regular customer. The ability to get room upgrades, airport drop-offs and discounts on photo shoots from a single loyalty program speaks to the different types of value-adds that Luxury Escapes offers across multiple parts of the travel experience.
Personally, I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to spend the amounts of money you would need to reach Silver, Gold or Platinum status for the benefits that are on offer. I already get airport lounge access through Priority Pass and frequent flyer status, and I can get a lot more benefits when staying at hotels using my hotel loyalty program status. But I can see how this program would definitely appeal to some travellers.
Will you use the new Luxury Escapes loyalty program? Let us know on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum!
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