TW Diamond dinner
 

Anybody else on FT invited or attending the dinner tomorrow in Taiwan? Just curious what it'll be like and if it's worth attending.....

I am a DM based elsewhere though I am truly keen to know how was the dinner? What topics/conversations you had with CX representatives during dinner. Please do update.

dinner
 

Dinner was actually quite good. I can upload a picture of the set menu if that was possible, or I can email to you if you're interested. It was based on their new Milan route so it was a 5 course meal with different wines selected by a gentleman name John Isac. They introduced the Milan route, as well as the upcoming Moscow route, and the to be code share with Lan Chile. That they are reinstating 2 out of the 4 TPE-HK routes cancelled last year. (I was surprised they had cancelled so many).

Other than that, not many other questions from the staff- very relaxing dinner.
A raffle was drawn for various small gifts, stuff animal/airplane. And everyone received a small model A340. The GM at the end added an additional price for 2 biz tickets from TPE to Hk.

I enjoyed the meal quite a bit. They indicated there will be 3-4 different events this year. I hope I'll be invited.

Oh, I did speak to a few D+ members and from what they told me, they didn't fly nearly as many miles as some of the people I know (based in HK though). I politely asked their staff what the qualifications are as that'd be a goal for me, and that I I elected to leave UA's 1k to try Diamond. She didn't give me a straight answer... but only that D+ is top 1%. I questioned whether it's top 1% of revenue or miles flown- she said both. Her boss was also sitting at the table :)

Thank you very much indeed for the details. Sounds like a very nice dinner :)

Ahhh... the dinner was good, but the wines were excellent! Sorry I missed your post earlier otherwise would have said hi at the dinner!

What I heard was that they need to invite 100 DM and they sent word to the Marco Polo office in HKG who randomly picked the members. They invited 100, and about 50+ people showed up.

I thought it was pretty well done - very classy. Do they do these diners and get togethers elsewhere around the world? I was also told Taiwan has the second or 3rd greatest number of DM members in the world (I can't remember which) behind HKG and I want to say the USA (? is that correct)...

It's a great tool for building loyalty, and did I mention how amazing the wines were?? :D

There are MPC events in USA, but most are for GOs and DMs.

There was a dining event in San Jose, California, back in January. It was in a high-class French restaurant. Both GOs and DMs were invited. There should be similar events in San Francisco and other NA cities.

There was a San Francisco International Film Festival Screening event a month ago. It was also for GOs and DMs.

The only DM-only event I attended was a Steinway Piano Tasting event last year. There is one coming up next week, but I did not do my RSVP. It is just too much for me to fight 50 miles of rush hour traffic to attend a 2-hour event in San Francisco.

Well, I still hope CX would spice up their mileage calculations rather than hosting a few dinners. GO and DM should get bonus miles, that would gain a lot more loyalty than just providing dinner, and evidently 40+ people didn't go kind of proves that point.

The reception is for networking, which can be more useful than miles.

Well, yes and no... The CX people told me they used to invite DM + 1 to the events but too many people arrived with a colleague and a large stack of business cards and would suddenly turn the dinners into mini technology networking events (gotta love Taiwan and the tech sector!).

So they recently stopped inviting the +1 to keep the networking to a minimum, and focus more on just enjoying everyone's company and the wine.

While it's always good to network in the business world, I have enough company functions and client functions that allows me to network just fine. I do not need CX to throw me networking parties. Give me the added miles.