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Get your HfP Christmas Party tickets – with £3,500 of prizes to be won

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As we announced last week, we are pleased to say that we are holding our second Head for Points reader Christmas party on Tuesday 12th December.

Like last year we are taking over the Dry Martini bar at the Melia White House hotel from 6pm to 8pm.  This is situated just a few minutes walk from Warren Street, Regents Park and Great Portland Street tube stations.

This is a great opportunity for you to have a few seasonal drinks and, more importantly, to meet fellow readers and to share your travel hints and tips – and perhaps even learn a few inside secrets that can’t be written about online.

melia-white-house

Qatar Airways is generously sponsoring the party and underwriting the majority of the bill.

And we have a very cool prize draw too ….

There will also be a prize draw on the night.  Everyone will be given a free raffle ticket on arrival.

One guest will win a Business Class return flight with Qatar Airways from the UK to any Qatar Airways destination!  (Well, almost anywhere – you can’t backtrack from Doha which means North America is excluded and Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, and Auckland are also excluded.)

Regular readers will know that we rate the Qatar Airways business class product very highly – especially the new Qsuite currently being introduced (photo below) which comes with its own door.  The fact that you can earn Avios and British Airways tier points when you fly with Qatar Airways, due to their membership of the oneworld alliance, is an extra bonus.  If the prize winner books themselves onto a Boeing 777 service from London Heathrow they have an excellent chance of being able to try Qsuite!

Qatar Airways Qsuite

Here is the list of all raffle prizes that have generously been offered so far:

The main prize:

  • Qatar Airways:  1 Business Class return ticket from the UK to any Qatar Airways destination (some small print applies, but not much)

And over £1,500-worth of other prizes donated by some of our friends:

There should be another couple of prizes to add before the big night.

We would like to thank everyone above for generously donating the prizes.  As there are only 150 people coming, your chances are good – 1 in 10.  Bring a friend or partner and you’ve got a 1 in 5 chance of winning!

For clarity …. you need to be in the room when the raffle is drawn (probably 7.15 – 7.30) to claim your prize.  Bear this in mind if you think you might have to leave early.

And a goody bag for every guest

Whilst we are still working on the final details, we are hoping that that all guests will receive a goody bag on departure.  No promises though.

If your company would like to contribute promotional material (150 sets needed) to the goody bags in return for a contribution towards the bar bill, please email me at anika at headforpoints.com.

How do I get my ticket?

Because we need to ensure that people who ask for tickets turn up, we are charging £20 per ticket.  This price includes VAT.

However, your £20 ticket covers unlimited house wine and beer between 6pm and 8pm.  Soft drinks will also be available.  Spirits etc can be purchased for cash.  We are not making a penny from this and indeed Qatar Airways is footing the bulk of the cost.  After 8pm, the bar will remain open for cash payments for anyone who wants to stay longer.

To give as many people as possible the chance to buy a ticket, we have decided to sell the 150 tickets in two batches this year.

  • Batch One will go on sale on Friday 24th at 10am
  • Batch Two will go on sale on Saturday 25th at 10am

We have set up two ticket sale pages:

If you are buying a ticket on Friday please use this link

If you are buying a ticket on Saturday please use this link

You can buy up to two tickets but please don’t be nervous about coming on your own.  Frequent flyers are a friendly bunch and always happy to share details of their recent trips and miles-earning tips.  There will be name badges this year to make introductions easier.  We would actually recommend that you do not bring a guest if you don’t think that they will want to chat about travel all night, as it might ruin the fun for both of you.

American Express is accepted.

We look forward to seeing you on the 12th.

Category

Qatar Airways and Privilege Club

Comments (234)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Polly says:
    24 Nov24 November 10:12

    Trying to buy since 10..but kept saying unavailable! Now saying sold out..shame!

  • S says:
    24 Nov24 November 10:13

    I got a ticket, no bots. I had my card number, email address etc typed up so I only had to copy/paste in. Thought it was overkill but I guess not!

    • Ian says:
      24 Nov24 November 10:17

      Someone’s bought all the tickets to ensure they win all the prizes!

    • Polly says:
      24 Nov24 November 10:20

      S, l couldn’t even get in to that stage.. Would have happily been ready to press pay, but it kept saying site was unavailable. How on earth did you even get into it…lets hope it’s single tickets tomorrow, or if people Can’t use them they can let rob know.

      • S says:
        24 Nov24 November 10:26

        I had to refresh 3 times after 10:00:00 on the dot and it showed 70 available when I got in. I’m not sure if the lightening fast internet in my office has anything to do with my success!

  • Cambus says:
    24 Nov24 November 10:14

    I think the bots won. Let’s see them appearing on stubhub soon.

  • Pid says:
    24 Nov24 November 10:14

    Got through, clicked on get tickets but by the time I selected and clicked OK all must have gone! Hopefully successful on Sat or will be two years I missed out!

  • Eddie Davies says:
    24 Nov24 November 10:15

    i was live on Eventbite at 10.00 am but denied access so not how i missed out? Guess overwhelming support from our keyboard warrior community. i’ll try again tomorrow but not sure how i could improve on today’s chances!

  • Polly says:
    24 Nov24 November 10:15

    Something weird…how can they all be gone in a minute… Didn’t even get one last year either…

  • following from behind says:
    24 Nov24 November 10:17

    So gutted. I’m in the promotional picture shown from last year – on the far left.

    I’m in the air when the second batch of tickets goes on sale so that is me down and out.

    Rob – can we have another think for next year (or indeed the second batch!). Selling out in 15 sec doesn’t seem fair. Maybe a pre-register and picking the people at random would be better. Otherwise only the people with bots or lightening reflexes will be going to these events…

    • Tyra says:
      24 Nov24 November 10:23

      I’m the one in the Santa hat. Will try again tomorrow but I don’t know how to beat the bots…

    • Genghis says:
      24 Nov24 November 10:27

      Yep. I’m in the pic too. I refreshed at 10am and even then it was “unavailable”. Will try again tomorrow but some bots are at work here…

      • Polly says:
        24 Nov24 November 10:51

        G,
        See you there at 8 if not before.. Better luck tomorrow for all…finger on the button! …boy it is a popular event !

        • Ian says:
          24 Nov24 November 11:32

          Not sure how I can improve my chances. Loaded page at 9.59am, refreshed at 10am and it said unavailable. I thought they must be late going on sale. Refreshed every 20 seconds or so and it was the same, unavailable. By 10 past I guessed must just be late going on sale so checked here and realised it was sold out.
          There doesn’t seem to be many people posting saying they managed to get tickets?

          • Rob says:
            24 Nov24 November 11:52

            We get 25,000 visitors a day, if you add the 10,000 on the email list to the 15,000 daily website visitors. Stripping out the 1-off Google visitors still puts us on about 20,000. 80% are UK, so 16,000. We probably sold to 40-50 people depending on how many wanted 1 and how many wanted 2 (I haven’t seen the numbers, Anika has the password and she’s not here at the moment.) The maths are not in your favour …

            Frankly, I would be trying to come to this party if I wasn’t already organising it 🙂

            And we didn’t even talk about the goody bags, which will have contents to a higher value than the ticket price.

            The real question for us is price elasticity. We could charge more, but should we? We have a well-off readership, in general. The average drinks consumption last year was £40 per head. However, putting people off by charging more is a bit of a blunt instrument and, to be honest, if we charge more than I think people are likely to want to a bit more in terms of interaction from us when in reality Anika and I tend to spend 2 hours running around fire-fighting …

        • Leo says:
          24 Nov24 November 12:04

          Rob I’m glad the party looks to be a success – and I say this as someone not intending to come this year – but mate if it winds up with a situation where the likes of Genghis and Polly can’t get tickets there must be something amiss. There’s a hard core of loyal contributors who bring a lot to the table here in the comments section, if they can’t get tickets to the annual bash then what’s the point….

      • Waribai says:
        24 Nov24 November 13:51

        Yep…I’m in the photo too holding a beer with the camera clearly making me realise how follically challenged I have become….See you all there on the 12th!

        • Lady London says:
          24 Nov24 November 20:51

          £40 a head in drinks cost? That worked out at £20 a Coke last year for me then…. ! 🙂

    • Cate says:
      24 Nov24 November 12:52

      Like Leo I couldn’t make it this year either but I’m sure it will be great for those who can attend.

      From what I recall last year was the first event, this year was arranged late because of sponsors not coming forward early enough. It’s early days to get yearly events like this up and running, especially so if one is not experienced in organizing large groups which enable everyone to feel they’ve had a fair chance of being part of the action.

      Personally I think it’s a bold move suggesting people who didn’t get tickets can come after the event however it isn’t my event. Dec18 will be here soon enough 🙂

      • Rob says:
        24 Nov24 November 13:46

        There were various issues. The first is that it is a lot of work for us with zero revenue (in fact, we will take a loss if the drinks bill goes beyond a certain point) so we were not sure if we should repeat it. Secondly, sponsorship is tricky because you can only approach a couple of people at once – you can’t make a pitch to 10 parties – and they take ages to decide. Thirdly, Anika and I did not see each other for 24 consecutive days in October due to overlapping holidays and work trips which didn’t help.

        The obvious answer is a) hire a bigger venue to take 300 people, b) charge £10 entrance and c) make it a cash bar. We would then make £3,000 profit (as opposed to the £2,200 loss we made last year) and more people could come.

        I doubt we could get sponsorship for free drinks for 300 people because you’d be looking at a bill well over £5,000.

        • Jon says:
          24 Nov24 November 15:03

          HI
          Surely you can see what the issue is?
          Stop giving away free booze!

          £20 ticket still gets you a chance at the raffle (thought Heavily London centric and solo Corporate flyer…)
          And now a goody bag
          See how many freeloaders come then….

          • Rob says:
            24 Nov24 November 15:37

            I come from a freeloading culture! The banking sector (and indeed the travel sector now) is one long free champagne party if you are so inclined. I also spent much of my 20’s and 30’s planning my social life around such events, because it is better going to a reception in a luxury store with your mates for 2 hours of free champagne than hanging around a grotty pub paying £5 per pint. I don’t know any other model 🙂

            Anyway …. for clarity, as long as the people who bought tickets are readers – and 98% of readers never, ever, post comments and are equally as welcome as everyone else – then I’m fine with it. And I very much doubt people are randomly picking off tickets who don’t read the site.

            You could argue that we could have banned +1’s but that would alienate a lot of people (for example, we just looked and none of the people who bought 1 ticket today are female, whilst quite a few of the people who bought 2 tickets are female).

        • following from behind says:
          24 Nov24 November 16:21

          This is one of the best sites on the internet and it is a joy to wake up each morning and see what the travel Santa has in store for us each day.

          I have got my retired mum (66) reading it and she is fairly gregarious and, like many other readers, would be interested in the party but has zero ability or interest in clicking refresh at 10am on a Friday morning on the slim chance of bagging a ticket. The London marathon* is massively oversubscribed and they get people to sign up for tickets (and enter their credit card details) then they do a draw and take a payment. I know it would be a hassle to do such a thing for a smaller event but is worth considering (or perhaps just send the selected people a personalised link which expires after 24 hours).

          I was lucky enough to go last year so I can’t complain too much but I do think the current approach is inherently biased. That’s not a criticism as I’ve got the benefit of hindsight, which Rob did not have when setting it up. It is a simple observation for making future events fairer.

          Well done to those who got tickets and Rob you have managed the reader reaction perfectly. H4P is a great site and I will continue to support it and recommend it to my travelling friends.

          *yes, I know 50,000 people aren’t going to want to go to the H4P Christmas party but I’m illustrating how you can create a fair system rather than a fastest finger first, which is unfortunately what has happened here. There is no way the full cross-section of readers will be going. It’s a fact, 100 times out of 100 I would get a ticket instead of my mum – she doesn’t know how to refresh a page.

        • Cate says:
          24 Nov24 November 16:33

          ‘The obvious answer is a) hire a bigger venue to take 300 people, b) charge £10 entrance and c) make it a cash bar. We would then make £3,000 profit (as opposed to the £2,200 loss we made last year) and more people could come.’
          Robert Burgess.

          Rob, your unpaid articles and advice have enabled me to get flights to Singapore, over to Hong Kong and back to Gatwick for two people plus hotels either in first or business. I would pay for this out of my own pocket and couldn’t claim it back through expenses. The whole lot comes to nearly 30k.

          Now what sort of a person would I be if I begrudged you 10 quid eh? Thanks for everthing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • following from behind says:
    24 Nov24 November 10:19

    LOL – comment of the year!

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