NXEC ‘escape’ Disappointing
by JFC AdminI had hoped that National Express East Coast (NXEC) would provide a loyalty scheme that’d encourage people off the planes and onto the trains. The new scheme was recently announced and is called ‘escape’ and launches on the 1st December. I used to find the GNERtime scheme excellent but this new scheme is really hardly any incentive at all. Here’s how they compare…
| NXEC ‘escape’ | GNERtime | |
| Qualifying spend (in 3 months) | £1800 | £1200 |
| First Class travel for two vouchers | 2 | 6 |
| First Class travel for one vouchers | 2 | 2 |
| Complimentary wine with meal | Quarter Bottle | Half Bottle |
| Offers on food and drink | "Seasonal offers" | 2 for 1 drinks |
| Buffet vouchers | None | 4 x £5 |
| Restaurant vouchers | None | 4 x 3 course |
| Ticket offers | Online discounts on advance tickets | Unlimited GNERtime Duo tickets |
| Lounge access | Member + guest | Member + guest |
NXEC ‘escape’ also mentions discounts with carefully selected partners, but the partners are not listed. I suspect these will be similar to the GNERtime offers of 15% off Superbreak hotel bookings, 10% off Europcar car hire and a discount on meeting room hire in the First Class lounges.
To put it simply, with NXEC ‘escape’ you need to spend more to get a lot less. I hope National Express makes some improvements to this scheme very soon.
Higher Spenders
The way GNER and NXEC have decided to reward those that exceed the qualifying criteria differs slightly. GNERtime had a second tier called GNERtime Privilege where if you spent £3600 in three months you would get an additional card for your partner which would give them lounge access and the on board drinks offers as well as an additional 2 x travel for two vouchers, 2 x travel for one vouchers and 2 x restaurant vouchers, add this to the more generous nature of GNERtime and you’d have a significant amount of free First Class travel. There were also additional offers for Orient Express which was also owned by GNER’s parent company Sea Containers.
The NXEC scheme is different, there’s no higher tier and no partner card but you do get extra vouchers based on your spend. The number of extra vouchers is similar to what GNER offered but because their basic offering is not very good you end up with less vouchers for a £3600 spend than you got with GNER on a £1200 spend.