Real estate firm Bayleys yesterday joined Air New Zealand’s Airpoints programme and the airline is on the lookout for more partners.

Property vendors will earn one Airpoints Dollar for every NZ$2000 of a property’s sale price up to a maximum of 500 Airpoints Dollars.

Bayleys joins Audi, Farmlands, NZ Post and Westpac as recent additions to an expanding number of partners.

Air New Zealand’s general manager customer value Hamish Rumbold said the partnership with Bayleys meant customers could now “literally, get a holiday ‘on the house’.”

The airline’s loyalty programme has more than 1.8 million members, up 250,000 in the past 12 months and with a target of two million in the next two years.

Mr Rumbold said loyalty schemes are in the top two or three reasons for choosing to fly with an airline.

Big box retailers, telecommunications and a jewellery chain were among other areas.

Bayleys managing director Mike Bayley said the offer was available nationwide and included residential, commercial, industrial and rural real estate sectors, with potential to evolve into business sales and property services in the future.

“It will enable our vendors to earn Airpoints Dollars which they can then spend on flights, upgrades, Koru membership and items within the Airpoints Store. And all of this simply for conducting a transaction they would have undertaken anyway,” he said.

Others who joined

Last month Westpac swoopedinto the Airpoints programme with Air New Zealand after a two-decade relationship with the BNZ. And in February Audi joined the airline in the programme, allowing customers to earn dollars by buying a car or use them to part pay for a vehicle using them.

Ben Goodale, managing director of just One.99, a marketing firm that specialises in loyalty schemes, said the Air New Zealand scheme had benefited from being simple by being dollar for dollar.

“Most people are looking to use them as often as possible.

“They [Air New Zealand] are using up capacity on flights with Airpoints,” said Goodale.