An Opportunity to Meet Heads of Loyalty Programs and Hear What’s Next

by Gary Leff

The Randy Petersen Travel Executive Summit is taking place on Friday, April 26 at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner.

Executives in the loyalty industry attending one of their major conferences are paying $149 to attend while folks attending Frequent Traveler University were sent a link to sign up for $99 if they wish. Others in the DC area that day can do so as well.

The event will include brunch throughout and have two main sessions:

  • Planes, Trains and Automobiles will include observations from Bob Crandall (former CEO American Airlines), Jeff Robertson (VP, SkyMiles, Delta Air Lines), David Lim (CMO, Amtrak), Avis, National Car Rental, Enterprise Car Rental and Hertz.

  • The Plastic Fantastic features representatives from leading credit card brands and individual cards on how credit cards helped pull loyalty programs through the recent economic crisis, how much longer we can expect sky high acquisition bonuses, and what’s coming next.

Lots of insider views and interaction with program heads. Here’s my writeup of the first Travel Executive Summit which featured the heads of the United, American, Delta, Hyatt, and American Express Membership Rewards programs.

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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  1. Shame this wasn’t communicated when the rest of the weekend was promoted so people could adjust their flights accordingly……….

  2. Gary- If the head of Hilton Honors,Jeff Diskin, is there, kick him in the balls from all of us! That absolute prick deserves it! Jeff Diskin is the least customer focused head of a loyalty program in the industry. I hope he gets fired after Hilton loses customers after this massive devaluation and poor treatment of loyal customers. At a minimum I hope Hilton Honors gets wacked with HUGE dollar losses from all these panick redemptions by members by the March 28 deadline. I redeemed 3 AXON rewards just last week! Screw Hilton! I’m switching my loyalty to Hyatt and Starwood.

  4. Odd, I don’t remember getting any email for the Freddies or the Executive Summit. Like others have said, too late now. Flights are booked.

  5. Jeff Robertson is the only FFP guy attending? Sounds not so interesting to me.. who cares DL’s FF program?

  6. I attended last year and it was an interesting event, you get a sense of what is and is not important to the companies, which is often very different from what we see on the consumer side. I am a Delta Diamond, already earned my 2014 Diamond status, and the items on the top of my list (bring back nwa.com functionality, award-price availability competitive with other airlines, etc) are nowhere hear the top of the list inside the Delta bunker. If you are interested in the industry as a business, this is an engaging peek behind the curtain.

  7. Luckily I live only a few hours away and can drive there the night before but it would have been much better if we knew about this earlier rather than hearing about it now for the first time. Surely they have our email addresses for when we registered.

  8. Had you rather hear from folks who are maximizing the system or from folks who want to maximize your credit card balances………..I think I’ll wait until Friday night to fly in……

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