I'm usually very impressed by the perceptiveness of the flyertalk community. But voting Delta's program as being better than United's (albeit barely) strikes me as bizarre.

http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/a...vantage-p.html

Now reasonable people can disagree on which airline is actually better to FLY, but reasonable, educated people (I think) cannot believe that Delta offers the better frequent flyer program. And I think everyone knows why. The number one purpose of a frequent flyer program is to earn free travel. You would have to be living in a cave not to know that it SUCKS to try to redeem your miles in the Delta program and get good value from that redemption.

What scares me about this result is that it says to airline management that you can gut a frequent flyer program and your best customers are too stupid to realize how badly you've devalued the program. So why not devalue?

The hotel results are also a bit odd, but I always attribute that to the fact that most travellers don't participate in enough programs to understand the comparative benefits. Since time immemorial, Marriott has always done well in hotel loyalty program polls, even though nobody has ever been able to tangibly explain why. On the other hand, lower-end programs like Choice and Wyndham can offer their particpants great benefits (like Wyndham has, by far, the best deal for hotel redemptions in NYC), but a good percentage of the voters are too "snobby" in their hotel choices to care.