See what you can win at the Head for Points 10th Birthday Party next week

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• Rob H not Rob says:

  3 Jul3 July 06:32

  Did any companies decline to get involved, eg Virgin etc or are they keeping their powder dry for Xmas or other events?

  • Rob says:

    3 Jul3 July 09:07

    Malaysia has airline exclusivity due to the value of their package (ANA hamper excluded).

    They didn’t ask for it but we decided it was only fair.

• James says:

  3 Jul3 July 07:31

  Looking forward to it!

• David says:

  3 Jul3 July 07:56

  Just wondering when the offer to buy tickets was posted as I must have missed that?

  • Rob says:

    3 Jul3 July 09:02

    Monday 30 May – long time ago because we had to move the date two weeks due to the rail strikes wrecking our first choice.

    • Alex Sm says:

      3 Jul3 July 10:31

      What about the returns / waiting list?

      • Rhys says:

        3 Jul3 July 14:37

        All the tickets have been reallocated already – we went through the waiting list, but it was 300+ strong so didn’t get to the bottom of it

        • Ned says:

          4 Jul4 July 10:54

          I’m logged into Eventbrite as i now have a spare second ticket. No idea where to click to release it back into the system! Also says no refunds

        • Rob says:

          4 Jul4 July 11:32

          You can’t release it. We gave you a 5 day window to request a refund after the date was changed, and all of those tickets were offered to the waiting list. We can’t do further changes now but if anyone reading this wants it, I am happy to pass their email address to you and you can arrange it between you.

        • Ned says:

          4 Jul4 July 11:36

          Makes sense – I appreciate the logistical nightmare that this must be for you guys. I’ve only just had the change in plans from the plus one and was doing this more for someone on the waitlist rather than for my £10. If you can spare the time to drop me the next person’s email address please do so but also realise you guys must have a million things on the to-do list!

    • Grant H says:

      4 Jul4 July 15:41

      Just sent an email with my address to hopefully buy Ned’s spare ticket 🙂

• Pid says:

  3 Jul3 July 08:01

  Gutted i missed getting a ticket this year.
  Not expecting the waitlist to yield a ticket!

• Sean says:

  3 Jul3 July 08:09

  Here’s what you could have won…..

  • ChrisC says:

    3 Jul3 July 10:38

    No mention of a speed boat or even the bus fare home!

• Paul says:

  3 Jul3 July 08:50

  Despite the free publicity they get, nothing from BA!
  Then again 2 weeks on hold trying to rebook the prize they cancelled at last minute is probably not that attractive!

  • Rob says:

    3 Jul3 July 08:56

    We have not approached other airlines and indeed turned down one generous offer. Malaysia has gone to a lot of trouble to get their prize put together and we wanted them to be the exclusive airline prize sponsor. ANA’s hamper doesn’t really count.

• Mike says:

  3 Jul3 July 09:31

  Seems a very London Centric focused event with those in the ‘bondu’ not able to attend with running the gauntlet of the railways or spending a fortune on alternatives! That is if you were aware of the event ? Even if HFP were advertising the event I saw nothing from Barclaycard ( I have a ‘Platinum card’ (whatever that means?) and a hotel ‘branded’ card from Barclaycard) … so very disappointed by this lack of promotional material and that it excludes loads of non-London / ‘Home Counties’ based loyal followers!

  • Rob says:

    3 Jul3 July 10:01

    We ran two full articles before the tickets went on sale! We didn’t want Barclaycard to promote it because a) it was likely it would sell out in 10 minutes anyway and b) we’d prefer attendees to be regular readers.

    • Rob H not Rob says:

      3 Jul3 July 15:01

      This.

  • Kowalski says:

    3 Jul3 July 11:28

    First and foremost, surely the event is/should be aimed at the most regular loyal readers of the website. I look at the site every day, and was very aware of the event, there were 2 articles about it. They don’t need to promote it more as it was always going to sell out very quickly.

    As for it being a very London centric event, why wouldn’t it be? Why would it not take place in the capital city which has by far the largest population in the country?

    • Gareth Morgan says:

      3 Jul3 July 11:45

      Because it does give them a benefit that’s not available to others – on every occasion. If it moved around then that would be ‘fairer’. Why not enable virtual attendance for those who can’t physically get there?

      • Rob says:

        3 Jul3 July 12:05

        We are contemplating turning part of the raffle at Christmas (say prizes 5-20) into a charity online silent auction. This would allow us to raise money for a good cause whilst letting all readers take part and still leaving some biggies on the table for those in the room. Let’s see.

        • Richie says:

          3 Jul3 July 14:18

          That’s a good idea.

      • Kowalski says:

        3 Jul3 July 12:26

        Headforpoints is a business, why should it do what you or others think is ‘fairer’? I only expect it to make the best decisions for the business.

        • Rob says:

          3 Jul3 July 13:55

          The truth is that we couldn’t get more than 50 people to attend a weekday event outside London, no-one would sponsor it or support a raffle and it would cost at £1,000 in train and hotel costs for the team, including trips up to sort out the organisation, which would take them away for the core job of running the site. It makes absolutely no sense.

      • Brian78 says:

        3 Jul3 July 16:26

        Are you familiar with trains, planes and our automobiles?

        One of those would be a way for someone outside of London to attend

        • Michael says:

          4 Jul4 July 00:56

          I briefly considered flying from Belfast to attend the event, had I secured a ticket. Given the cancellation and rescheduling of the event (which I can understand and is out of the control of the HfP team) I’m glad I didn’t, but equally I now wouldn’t consider booking in the future as precedent has been set.

          Ironically I’m available for this week’s event but even if tickets were available the current air transport meltdown would mean I wouldn’t go.

          I wonder if a higher ticket price would have changed the thinking on the rescheduling…..

        • Rob says:

          4 Jul4 July 09:17

          The hotel would almost certainly have cancelled on us if we hadn’t moved it – no way could they have staffed up with no tubes or trains running. Barclays, who is paying 75% of the costs remember, would also have insisted we pull it.

  • Gary Arnold says:

    3 Jul3 July 13:38

    Not sure why you say it excludes non London readers?, I’m travelling especially from Stratford upon Avon first party and very much looking forward to it! No idea how you missed it but I read Headforpoints every day well done Rob and Rhys for organising this 😃

• Gormlesstraveller says:

  3 Jul3 July 09:33

  500*£10 = £5000 of ticket sales

  Raffle prizes = £15,000 easily
  Canapés and cupcakes = £5,000
  Networking opportunities = priceless

  Great value for those who got in

  • Rob says:

    3 Jul3 July 09:58

    You’ve clearly not ordered any canapes recently! The food bill is £15,000, admittedly including the cost of the people who will walk around serving it. Then there is the £4,000 bill for the free welcome drink, £900 for hotel security, £900 for the AV system, £800 VAT due on the ticket sales, £700 to Eventbrite ….

    • Alex Sm says:

      3 Jul3 July 10:32

      You guys do really a great job for us, even at a financial loss!

    • Flightsy says:

      3 Jul3 July 15:26

      Jeez, definitely feeling that my £10 ticket (that i got from a wait list reallocation – hurrah!) is an absolute bargain. Really looking forward to joining the event – I went last time on my own and stayed right to the end and made friends with a few Avios collectors for the evening 🙂 Thanks for organising HFP team!

    • TGLoyalty says:

      4 Jul4 July 11:23

      Honestly increase the price next time. Demand at £10 is obviously high

      • Rob says:

        4 Jul4 July 11:29

        What’s interesting is that, because we set up a waiting list this time, we now have an indication of total demand and can tweak the maths a bit to match up supply and demand a bit better.

        Barclays is fully funding the food bill though, so that’s a bit of an outlier – we normally wouldn’t bother with food.

        Ironically, accepting the Barclays money is what pushed this event into a loss. Normally we get offered a small amount of sponsorship money and there is a small profit left after deducting costs. This time we’ve channelled 100% of the Barclays money into food (more accurately, they have agreed to pay the food bill when it arrives) which pushed all of the other costs onto us.

        We’ll be fine tough. I am 100% certain that we can get some good ad campaigns booked in from trade guests who turn up and see for themselves what a high quality readership we have.

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