2,000 vendors give discounts to parents of GEMS pupils

GEMS Education has launched a rewards programme in hopes that it will "reduce the impact" of current and future rising tuition fees on UAE parents.

The GEMS Rewards Programme allows parents, staff, and students in the GEMS community to avail discounts from 2,000 different vendors across the country, potentially saving a household thousands of dirhams annually.

High and rising tuition fees has been one of the main challenges faced by UAE parents for many years. The CEO of GEMS of Education, Dino Varkey, believes this programme will produce enough savings for families to make tuition fees "cost neutral".

Discounts, available through a mobile app, are up for grabs from companies in the leisure, entertainment, food and beverage, health and services, hotels, beauty and wellness and attractions sector. Some 300,000 people in the GEMS community will have access to the rewards.

Varkey told Khaleej Times that a family has been able to make a saving of Dh850 within just 10 days of using the app.

"The savings that you generate through the programme will, over the long term, allow you to make tuition cost neutral," he said.

"We already believe that in terms of tuition fees increasing, for example, the programme gives more than enough opportunity to offset tuition fees increases.

"When you consider the fees at a lot of our affordable schools in the UAE, you're talking about fees that are Dh8,000, and a family has been able to save 10 per cent of the cost of tuition through one interaction in the app.

"We have many interactions every day - you may spend time with your family, you might take them to an adventure club, to a hotel. We all have a number of interactions everyday and in each of those interactions, if we could provide an intangible benefit; effectively that saving is something we would offset against the tuition that you currently spend. That's the hope. The more you participate, the more your ability to generate savings."

The rewards programme is available to all GEMS parents, however, eight other people, whether friends or family, can also avail the benefits with the same logins, even if they are not in the GEMS community. Since the soft launch a week ago, there have been 15,000 downloads, over 950 redemptions valued at Dh150,00. The programme can potentially impact over 700,000 people as over 85,000 parents will enroll into the programme and they can extend the same membership to eight other people including from outside the GEMS community.

Source: Khaleej Times