Alliance vs Marketing

[Sidereus]

I´m not sure about the value of maintaining an alliance.

Most of them costs 0,8% of the monthly income. Well, with this money I can improve my marketing campaigns a lot, reflecting in my image, LF and so.

So, what´s the better choice: spend money with alliances or use it to improve your marketing?

[Jps]

I would say that it depends on the size of the alliance. The more memebers it has, the more its imcome is, and thus the more it can spend on marketing.

[Sigma]

Alliances for sure.

0.8% doesn't buy you much marketing at all.  It varies by company, but you can expect to spend anywhere from 5-20% of of your revenues on Marketing to get and maintain a CI of 100 (usually in the 5-10% range for most).

Even splitting the difference, 0.8% is a mere one-tenth of what you're likely spending on Marketing.

And that's just the tangible costs of being in an alliance.  The real value is in the benefits you get outside of whatever pax boost you may see.  I would have had a much harder time taking out my competition than I did in an Alliance.  And I would have had to worry about MANY more airlines coming after me if I was in an alliance; not only the ones that are in my Alliance who would be threatened, but also the ones who are deterred by my being in an Alliance.  The value to be placed on that is truly immense.  Three of us in my Alliance are the three largest airlines in the entire game and are based out of the US -- if not for an Alliance we would be going after each other rather than working together against others.  Not to mention the deterent factor of the three largest airlines in the game being part of the same Alliance out of the same country -- clearly others around us aren't likely to pick fights, whereas seperate and fighting amongst ourselves we'd be easy targets.

I would readily spend at least 5 times as much in Alliance fees and still think it's worth every penny.  At least if your Alliance is good anyway.  If all you do is join up and funnel money to a faceless black hole, then it wouldn't have nearly as much value.  I'd still say the pax boost is worth a meager 0.8% no matter what though.