IBgkim

This poll will determine which benefit for this rewards program will appear on the official January ballot for the 2015 FlyerTalk Awards.

Please note that once you have cast a poll vote, it cannot be changed.

You may vote in any or all of the nominations polls across FlyerTalk. Simply navigate to your favorite program’s forum and cast your vote. Links to all benefits polls can be found here.

This poll will close December 16, 2014.

Official FlyerTalk Awards balloting begins January 20, 2015. For more information on the Awards, and last year's results, click here.

Happy voting!

-The FT Team

nicolas75

Royal Ambassador status

uk1

I mention this every year but the issue is always ignored. I have been told every year this issue will be cured the next.

Priority Club Rewards is one programme, The Ambassador and Royal Ambassador are two other completely different programmes for completely different hotels. Membership of all three is achieved in different ways and offering completely different benefits. One is paid for, one is earned for one set of hotels ie a loyalty programme and the other applied for and status increased the more loyal you are. You are also seemingly asking Reward Members to vote on how attractive they think RA benefits are. Why?

You cannot do a survey or poll combining all three and produce results that mean anything. I know this is inconvenient but this is really poor. The poll hasn't even asked which programme respondents belong to. The list even misses out equally significant benefits like weekend certificates. The poll and the results will be meaningless and grossly unfair and misleading.

A specific example is that the results will probably result in the Royal Ambassador programme will lose out because of the much higher and overwhelming number of respondents to a completely different and comparatively poor programme ie Priority Club Rewards which makes it a pointless and damaging and misleading exercise.

And when you compare these results to another group, won't the group with most members be nominating the winning benefit? So it isn't anything to do with benefits but more membership numbers.

Please withdraw the poll and produce three separate polls, one for each programme.

nicolas75

I don't think that it is relevant to make a distinction of the different benefits of the Royal Ambassador status, as it is a global and guaranteed package

nicolas75

+1

uk1

The same useless poll has now appeared for different geographics.

The annoying thing about this is not just "not listening" but they choose to have different polls for different geographics but at the same don't seperate the completely different programmes. Each of the three iCHG programmes do not vary across membership geographics. But as they wish to report by geographics so in this twilight world they separate the geographics instead of the programmes.

It might have worked if they had three polls covering the whole world - one for each programme - and then had within each a tick box for each geographic.

This would have provided a meaningful poll with no extra polls overall and a larger more robust population for the smaller programmes like RA. The approach adopted means that the best most exlcusive programme amongst it's small base will probably never win.

This is always what happens when people without any expertise always think that polls/research is simple.

nicolas75

+1 again

Actually, I do not see any interest to make a difference in regions for companies and programs which - by definition - are global.

uk1

This programme continues to be all over the place.

On the BAEC poll they have included companion tickets which are not a component of BAEC but is instead a component of credit card programmes. If they include companion tickets then they should have also included Tesco points. Both are external methods of acquiring seats but presumably more seats are acquired via Tesco points conversion than by credit card companion tickets but either neither or both are BAEC benefits.

It is a shame because the results that will be eventually announced will not relate in the slightest to the most popular benefits amongst the actual membership of each separate programme.

On the ICHG poll for example every vote by a Priority Club member for a benefit available to them say room upgrades statistically reduces and swamps the popularity of say free mini bar to RAs and will always beat it. Look at the results so far ...

IMH

You're right, of course, but it's been that way every year and many of us have exchanged emails with various IB reps about the silliness. They haven't changed much, so we have to conclude that preparing a sensible, meaningful set of polls would require more time and effort than IB is prepared to put into the exercise.

uk1

Thanks.

The problem is that the project is harmful to FT'ers because it will authoritatively influence operators to provide benefits that are not what their most frequent customers actually want and reward them in future years for doing so.

FLYGVA

We do have taken into account the programm structure, but the general problem would be, that both programms are within the same company (IHG).

Intercontinental Hotels belong to the IHG hotel group which also has Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza ... In addition, every Ambassador is also Prority Club Gold and every Royal Ambassador also hold Priority Club Platinum Status. In so far, there ia a relation between Ambassador and Priority Club programm. Of course it is not the other way round, which make it even more difficult. And both programms credit the points into the same account.

Many member post that Priority Club Status alone is - more or less - worthless. In so far, we have put the focus on Ambassador Programs but of course also take into account the Priority Club Levels. But we do have to see these as one programm. It could be seen different, if points earned at IC hotels would get credited into another account and could only be used at IC hotels.

It is not that we do not try to find a solution, but the only thing to solve this would be to have two polls, one for Ambassador Programm and one for Priorty Club and this is unfortunately not possible as this would mean IHG got two entries so two say while allother programms have only one.

I fully understand, that this is for some of a disappointment.

FLYGVA
co-moderator IHG Forum

uk1

FLYGVA

Thanks for posting a response to the concerns rather than just deleting the dissent.

The problem is that the polls are not just polls with a few minor irritating flaws, they are flaws that when the flaws are combined together make it harmful conducting them because the results will be presented in a way that isn't in the slightest justified by the methods. It is the compound effect of many many serious flaws. This is both unfair for the non-winning companies , and potentially rewards those that shouldn't have won or even worst who have simply been better organised at the very, very easy task of hijacking the whole process. It is certainly bad for FT'ers. It is impossible for you to avoid anyone posting in any poll irrespective of whether they belong to it or not or whether they are employees of one of the company itself or it's "competitors". This lays the programme open to malice and extremely easy rigging. I could do this by myself in a few hours and decides who will win and with what benefit. I could certainly do it next year if you decided to put in a few IP restrictions. A very few votes can very easily decide the outcome.

At the same time within the same poll you are not clear as to whether you want them to vote for benefits not available to them but available to other members of entirely different programmes. No rules have been stated. So each poll for each provider has different people presuming and assuming different rules. There has also been a haphazard listing of benefits, missing some but including some that actually aren't component benefits of the programme (eg the 241 voucher on BAEC) ... which means that asking people to post "other benefits" in free format disadvantages those benefits against those on the list. There are countless other flaws which I won't repeat from some of my earlier postings. Any single one of the flaws should immediately stop an organisation with integrity from proceeding and prevent FT from continuing with the polls. However the combined effect of all of the flaws makes the attempt ethically unacceptable. The winners will not be winners and the losers not losers.

A simple and rather dirty alternative would have been to have for each provider two programmes. One for the "top elite" programme in this case RA, and the other poll "For the rest". There could be an overall score and ratings for each listed benefit, perhaps each respondent giving a three for their most favoured and one for their least out of the whole list, this approach more statistically useful than just giving one tick which is virtually meaningless. A further choice would be their geographic. This would then be less rather than more polls.

Analysis would be to compare which top tier programme amongst say all airlines or all hotels is the best in the industry amongst it's members and which is the best for lower tier members drilled further down then variations and differences by goegraphics.

This is of course still unacceptable because anyone can complete the poll and can complete it often by using not very complicated measures. All members of a marketing department can be asked to register and vote - there is no rule against it and no process preventing it and therefore control the whole programme so that they win. There is not a single element of this poll that appears to have been thought through and bluntly does not appear to have been put together by someone with any idea about how to construct such a programme.

However this approach would be simpler and have slightly more validity - or more accurately slightly less of the countless flaws - than the current approach presuming only those that respond should.

I hope the comments are helpful.