Student Starts Service For Frequent Flyers

Saying he wants to cash in on "the greatest market strategy in business," a Harvard sophomore has started his own frequent flyers coupon business.

Bill A. Matz '88 last month created "Executive Coupon Brokers," a firm in the business of buying and selling reduced-rate air travel coupons. Matz touts his venture as "the nation's leading coupon brokerage."

Conducted out of a second-floor office at 1208 Massachusetts Ave., the business sports a toll-free telephone number and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. hours. Five Harvard undergraduates work for the sophomore entrepreneur.

Matz, a frequent participant in Pan American Airlines's frequent flyers program, said he realized last summer how easy it was to earn flying miles and that people might not always want to use accrued miles for personal travel.

He said he thought he could profit by buying and selling first-class tickets at a low market price. Matz organized his business at the end of last summer, taking out bank loans and buying ads in The Wall Street Journal and Frequent Flyers Magazine.

Matz said that because the business is still new, he does not know how lucrative it will become. But he predicted that he will be able to meet costs this term and reel in a profit in the spring, when coupon bartering has been known to increase by as much as 60 percent.

About 10 such coupon brokerages currently do business in United States and that the number is likely to rise with growing interest in the field, Matz said.

Frequent flyer programs have become a multi-million-dollar business for airlines and coupon brokerages since American Airlines introduced the first program after the 1981 airline deregulation, said Richard L. Greene '88, who works for Matz on a part-time basis.

Although these brokerages are not usually run by students, Matz said he thinks it's "just as easy for a Harvard student to be competing in this market as someone who's been in business for 10 years."

When potential customers call "Executive Coupon Brokers," they do not necessarily know that they are dealing with Harvard students.

"I think it would be a hindrance if people knew us as college students," Matz said. "They would be prejudiced against us--we are not the K-Mart of coupon brokering."

Matz said the personalized service his business offers has paid off. He said a number of potential customers have called saying they heard "Executive Coupon Brokers" were "friendly folks."