Changes Coming as Velocity Frequent Flyer Rebrands

Virgin Australia’s loyalty program Velocity Frequent Flyer is rebranding with a new logo and a new slogan – and there are more changes on the way.

Velocity Frequent Flyer CEO Nick Rohrlach unveiled the new branding at an event in Sydney on Thursday, along with the new tagline of “Velocity means fast”.

“We want to say now that Velocity means fast. We’re really proud to be faster to earn, we’re proud to be faster to redeem, and we’re really proud of being faster to get to status,” Rohrlach said.

A major advertising campaign commences on Sunday.

Velocity Frequent Flyer believes now is the right time to launch a new brand campaign as Virgin Australia returns to profitability for the first time in a decade. It comes as Velocity is also celebrating various milestones including a new partnership with Luxury Escapes and reaching 11.5 million members.

Half a million new members have joined Velocity Frequent Flyer in the last six months alone. Many Velocity members who stopped using the program during the pandemic have also started to re-engage.

Virgin Australia is also proud to have just won “Best Cabin Crew” in the AirlineRatings.com awards for the fifth consecutive year.

More announcements are on the way

While the new branding won’t make much of a practical difference to Velocity members, this is just the start of things to come. There are some more substantial announcements around the corner.

“There will be more to come… Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll have a number of ways to prove that we mean fast, and we mean things differently,” Rohrlach said on Thursday.

The first of these announcements turned out to be a change to Velocity reward seat pricing on domestic Virgin Australia flights.

Australian Frequent Flyer understands another change could be on the way to better reward Virgin Australia’s most loyal and high-flying customers.

Some of the most common requests on AFF have been lifetime Velocity status and more benefits for frequent flyers who earn well over the threshold to reach Velocity Platinum status each year. Rival Qantas has a Platinum One status level that high flyers can aim for, while Velocity doesn’t currently have a publicly available tier above Platinum. But we’ll have to wait to see exactly what Virgin has in mind.

With Virgin Australia commencing flights to Tokyo later this month, its new partnership with All Nippon Airways is also due to launch soon. There may also be other new partnerships in the works.

In addition, Velocity intends to offer lots of promotions over the coming period to reward members for shopping with program partners.

We’ll no doubt learn more over the coming weeks. Watch this space…

The author travelled to Sydney as a guest of Virgin Australia.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.