Voting Has Launched for the Frequent Traveler Awards!

by Gary Leff

I shared the announcement last month about the coming launch of the awards. Well, voting has begun and will be open for a month.

The Frequent Traveler Awards fill an important niche.

  • Instead of awards bestowed by a group of self-appointed experts, the Frequent Traveler Awards represent the collective judgment of the traveling public.
  • Instead of an award for best airline product or nicest resort hotel, the Frequent Traveler Awards represent the best in loyalty programs.

When voting ends on October 15, real travelers will have spoken. And on November 4 in Houston we’ll all know which programs are the best.

There are (3) distinct regions, you select one region you wish to vote in:

  • Americas
  • Europe and Africa
  • Asia Pacific and Middle East

Then you will have an opportunity to ‘rank order’ first through fourth in each of six awards (five of which have separate hotel and airline categories).

  • Program of the Year (Airline and Hotel)
  • Best Elite Level (Airline and Hotel)
  • Best Promotion – Redemption (Airline and Hotel) .. best unique uses of miles or discounts for using your miles
  • Best Promotion – Earning (Airline and Hotel) .. best bonuses
  • Best Redemption Ability (Airline and Hotel) .. the ability to use your miles
  • Best Loyalty Credit Card (Combines Airlines, Hotels, non-branded programs)

Full disclosure, I’m Chairman of the Nominations Committee. It’s been a blast speaking with the heads of various mileage programs over the past several months, and getting great feedback and encouragement. While we’ve split up the calls, I’ve been privileged to speak with US Airways, United, Virgin American, Southwest and American… Hilton, Starwood, Marriott, Priority Club, Best Western, Wyndham.. great people all, and thrilled that awards recognizing programs that deliver the most value for their members will exist into the future.

Cast your ballot today for the programs of your choice!

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Great! You should consider linking this to FT user names or an email address. This thing allows me to vote multiple times if I want. People may misuse that.

  2. The “regions” fiction and the (associated) absence of several programmes I’d vote for makes this a bot of a farce. I’m based in the US, but my main airline programmes are not: Lufthansa, British Airways, bmi. As for credit cards, the list includes the plain vanilla Hilton HHonors Amex, but not the “Surpass” card that many people would say is better.

  3. I had trouble on the Best Elite Program (Hotel)… Put 1st selection but would not show up in box nor was able to move back to list

  4. having the same problem, when I drag my #1 option, it simply dissapears from the list on the left but does not show up on the list on the right. I am using Internet Explorer 7.0 and also tried FireFox with same results.

  5. Also am having issues voting. When I move the choice to the box on the right it sometimes doesn’t show up on the right side but is gone from the left side. Too many bugs!

  6. Sorry about glitchy voting they tell me that’s fixed, though hitting refresh solved the problem as well. Not as intended and apologies, really.

    Re regions, you select one and only one to vote in, it doesn’t have to be the one you live in.

    And we list only one entry per program so folks aren’t voting against themselves. (Eg if AA had the 2 best promos but listing 2 AA promos causes neither to win.)

Comments are closed.