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Starting tomorrow …. we announce the HfP Travel & Loyalty Awards winners

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Thank you to everyone who voted in our inaugural Head for Points Travel & Loyalty Awards last month.

Over 4,500 of you took the time to vote, which we really appreciate.

Regular readers will know that we don’t usually publish on Christmas Day or Boxing Day.  However, with 12 categories to announce, it turns out that it fits very nicely into the 12 days of Christmas, and allows us to round everything off by Sunday 5th January.

Head for Points Travel & Loyalty Awards winners

There will be 18 winners in all.  In six of the 12 categories, we have awarded an ‘Editor’s Choice’ award on top of the reader award.  This was either because the votes were very close, or because we wanted to recognise excellence in a product or service which does not necessarily have mainstream appeal.

Rhys and I had good fun working through all of your votes, especially seeing what you had selected in the ‘Other’ category.  Some of the winners were not the ones we expected, although – in retrospect – the fact that our readers fly British Airways far more than they fly anyone else means that any company in the BA ecosystem was going to do well.

If you can spare five minutes tomorrow from cooking the turkey, please check back to see who won “Best Business Class Seat and Service”.

We are not just announcing the winner in a two sentence article!   For each category, we’ve taken the opportunity to discuss the shortlist and give our own views.

The other announcements will be:

  • Best New Business Class Seat – Boxing Day
  • Best Airline or Rail Loyalty Scheme – 27th December
  • Best UK Airport Lounge (Airline) – 28th December
  • Best UK Airport Lounge (Independent) – 29th December
  • Best New UK Airport Lounge – 30th December
  • Best New UK Airport Hotel – New Year’s Eve
  • Best Hotel Loyalty Scheme – New Year’s Day
  • Best Hotel Loyalty Promotion 2019 – 2nd January
  • Best UK Travel Rewards Payment Card – 3rd January
  • Best Special Sign-Up Offer on a UK Travel Rewards Payment Card 2019 – 4th January
  • Best Travel Innovation – 5th January

Each winner will receive a rather snazzy trophy in the New Year.  Let us know if you see one on display anywhere!

For clarity, our normal editorial coverage will resume on 27th December alongside the awards coverage. We are not stopping our usual news and features for the full 12 days.

And our first winner is ….

Our first winner is the lucky voter we picked at random to receive a prize of 10,000 Avios.

And that is ….. David G.   Well done.

If you are a David G and you haven’t had an email from us, it isn’t you.  Sorry.

Thanks again to everyone who voted.  It has been a big success and, importantly, the airline, hotel, lounge and credit card companies who you voted for have been very supportive.  They know that the HfP readership is a large and influential part of their customer base.

Category

General

Comments (17)

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

  • BJ says:
    24 Dec24 December 04:41

    Builds the excitement nicely, and promises to be controversial already 🙂 Firstly, we will likely have @Callum or @Julian commenting on precisely which the 12 days of Christmas actually are, provoking an HFP dispute on that. Secondly, we have already learned that Rob (and/or Rhys?) disagree with their readership no less than half the time…bring the debate on!

    Congrats to David G.

    • FC99 says:
      24 Dec24 December 08:33

      Imagine if someone from London wins it……

    • Rob says:
      24 Dec24 December 08:34

      We are not disagreeing! In general we have used Editor’s Choice to water down the impact of HFP readers predominantly flying BA from London.

      The reality is that even if the (non-existant) Qatar Airways lounge in Cardiff gave out unlimited Krug and caviar and drove you to your plane it would never win best lounge via reader vote!

      • Marcw says:
        24 Dec24 December 08:52

        Therefore it’s not the best , but most popular?

        • Rob says:
          24 Dec24 December 09:41

          You can’t have it both ways. Preferably you only want people to vote for products they have personally tried, which (for HFP readers) is going to mainly mean products linked to the BA ecosystem.

          Encouraging people to vote for products which they haven’t tried but which they have read are pretty good is not necessarily a better way of doing things ….

          I think we have the best equilibrium in how we have done it. BAEC has won ‘best loyalty scheme’ for over 30 years in the Business Traveller awards. Do we really want to end up like this, never able to acknowledge any smaller scheme which has really pushed the boat out?

          • John says:
            24 Dec24 December 13:57

            I think a vote doesn’t mean very much unless over 80% of the voters have tried over 80% of the choices. I suspect most people only tried a few of the choices for each question.

          • Rob says:
            24 Dec24 December 15:23

            But it was not compulsory to vote for every question.

        • Lady London says:
          24 Dec24 December 12:09

          We are in Rome, marcw!

      • BJ says:
        24 Dec24 December 14:05

        I intended it as a lighthearted comment Rob, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the results and analysis. I guess I’m hopefull that HFP readers might return a more informed verdict than some of the other award lists we see elsewhere. Fully appreciate what you are doing with Editors Choice and think it’s a good thing.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:
    24 Dec24 December 08:51

    In what ways have the companies been “very supportive”?

    • Rob says:
      24 Dec24 December 09:43

      Virgin Atlantic promoted it to their 200,000 LinkedIn followers, as did No 1. The list of attendees at the dinner next month is looking like the most high powered gathering of UK loyalty executives for some time.

      No-one has given us any wonga. In fact, we turned down a large four figure sponsorship offer for the dinner because we didn’t want to commercialise it. We’re about £5k out of pocket in total on the awards, which is good going given that most awards events are far more profitable than the publications that organise them! An American group just paid a large sum for Buying Business Travel magazine purely to get their hands on the Business Traveller awards.

  • Alex Sm says:
    24 Dec24 December 10:13

    Looking forward to the results. A bit surprised that there are so many takers and so few givers among the HfP readers

  • Anna says:
    24 Dec24 December 10:33

    Honestly I don’t care about all the London-centres stuff. My life would be pretty much complete if BA started a direct flight from MAN to NYC! (Or another OW airline but I’d prefer to be able to use a 2 4 1!)

    • Lady London says:
      24 Dec24 December 12:07

      BA will only start a MAN-New York route if a new entrant to the market or someone like Norwegian tries one. That’s the way to get them to do it. Mysteriously, the route will only last as long as BA’s competitor. Then they’ll drop it as soon as the competition authorities are not looking.

  • Diydegsy says:
    24 Dec24 December 10:49

    Hi Rob, do you know if they are doing the Business Traveller Auction this year again?

    • Rob says:
      24 Dec24 December 11:00

      Business Traveller Asia is doing one, covering mainly Middle East and Asia. There is a link on the BT home page. Worth a look if you need hotels in that region next year.

      Not sure why there isn’t a UK one this year, unless it is launching later this week.

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

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