I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I thought the pushing of the voting by airline and hotel companies tended to cheapen the awards. I sort of felt that a number of people voting might not be real frequent flyers or hotel stayers, and might instead be hotel employees and vendors.

On the other hand, I sort of found the publicity about the awards offered and the airlines advertising it offered represented some good publicity for frequent flyers, validated the sometimes crazy things I do for miles and finally held airlines and hotel companies feet to the fire when they weakened their loyalty programs.

I'm a bit worried that while there are good effects of this for Randy's employees, airlines and hotel companies will be less worried now about the impact of weakening their programs.