What happened at the Head for Points Travel & Loyalty Awards 2023 dinner?
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Last Tuesday (yes, it’s taken almost a week to get ourselves back on track!) was the Head for Points Travel & Loyalty Awards 2023 dinner.
Over 6,000 of you voted over Christmas and New Year for your favourite loyalty programmes, credit cards and promotions – thank you for your support.
We will run through the results on Wednesday (pushed back by 24 hours due to coverage of the BA tier point changes). Today we wanted to bring you a few general photographs from the event.
Thanks to reader Mark of Studio One Twenty who answered our shout-out before Christmas and designed the tombstones for us.
We took over The Crypt of St Etheldreda’s in Ely Place at Holborn, which is operated by Bleeding Heart as a function venue. It was an inspired choice, fitting the 80 of us perfectly and having good lighting and acoustics.
I should thank Bleeding Heart at this point for the fantastic meal served. If you go to enough large scale dinners you come to expect second-rate food but this was a cut above. The team were also very accommodating as we changed the seating plan multiple times.
Here a few action shots from the night, although we’re saving the award presentation pictures for tomorrow.
All photos are by Ash Knotek who did a great job.
Here’s Rhys with Ivan from Hyatt and Laurent, the GM of Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars.
We couldn’t have funded the dinner without the generous sponsorship of Rakuten Advertising, one of the key affiliate marketing agencies in the travel and financial services space. Here is MD International, Rakhee Jogia:
Obviously an awards ceremony needs an MC. We were delighted that Sky News presenter (and travel nut) Jonathan Samuels agreed to host – he made it all look shockingly slick and easy, and it really isn’t.
Here is a shot of the full room looking back from the stage:
Here’s another familiar TV face, Paul Charles (founder of The PC Agency travel PR group) with Jonathan:
Here is the Hilton contingent:
We were delighted that Anssi and Eerike from Finnair flew in especially for the event (with Rhys and Katherine from The PC Agency):
Others who flew in included Ben, who runs Flying Blue, Delphine from Air France and Laura who runs World of Hyatt for EMEA. We also had a strong contingent from Manchester Airports Group who risked the rail network.
Plaza Premium turned out in force – here are Maciej, Louise and Sonali with Rhys:
Here I am with David, Andrew and Graham from Aspire Lounges:
We cunningly put the award nominations in a brochure for all guests, so that Jonathan Samuels didn’t have to read out the exact details of the shortlisted credit card bonuses and hotel loyalty promotions!
Here is Rhys’s airline-heavy table which included Maja who runs JetBlue in Europe, Gary who runs Qatar Airways in the UK and Ireland, Mohamed who runs Singapore Airlines in the UK and Ireland and Paul who is a VP at Cathay Pacific:
You won’t be surprised to hear that British Airways and American Express had a good night. Here are Amy (BA), Jack (American Express), Elizabeth (IAG Loyalty) and Esme (BA) sharing a photograph with their trophies:
But who won what? We’ll tell you tomorrow!
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