Great idea :)

^^

Indeed! The awards will be given out among three wordwide geographical divisions: The Americas; Europe & Africa; and the Middle East, Asia & Oceania.

At this time, for the 2012 awards at least, there is no central gathering planned. Multiple simultaneous local mini-events however are a possibility...

I think any awards program strives to do two things: reward the programs that are really making it happen for their customers, and motivate those that are not measuring up to do their jobs better. Given the tremendous influence that FlyerTalkers have, I would say woe betide those who fail to heed the results of our polling.

To that end...

We're not terribly interested in specifically calling to the carpet those programs who failed to impress their customers this year. We prefer the carrot to the stick: striving to win, rather than trying not to lose, should produce better results than a bunch of programs jockeying to be sure they do the bare minimum. Like FlyerTalk itself, the Awards are about excellence in travel.

They may not, but if you find that someone wants to pick up the tab for a group of noisy, drunk FTers, let me know, so I can plan to be there too. I can be as noisy and drunk as the next FTer. :D

Why not make these programs by nomination rather than invitation? As in, let FT-members nominate and then vote for the best and worst. Programs, airlines, companies and what have you.

A company does not have to consent to be acknowledged the best of its lot. Nor the worst.

That's a fine idea! One additional thought - let anyone vote in all (or more than one) geographical division.

That was one of the problems with the Inside Flyer awards -- you had to select which geographical region you wanted to vote in (often based on where your address placed you), and it limited you to that region for all the votes. This is hard on world travelers, since I might want to vote Cathay Pacific as best Premium Class, and vote for Starwood AMEX for best affinity credit card, but couldn't do both as the Starwood AMEX was offered only in the US/North America region and Cathay Pacific only in Asia-Pacific.

AFAIK that is already planned.

So, these will be in announced in March with voting in January?

Interesting - the Freddies are back & looks like they launch voting in February, with notification usually in April - http://www.freddieawards.com/

And it doesn't look the FT Awards are doing anything this year - http://www.ftawards.com/

Interesting that milepoint is an FT award sponsor

I heard from some folks that the FT Awards (which don't stand for FlyerTalk - but for Frequent Traveler) merged with the Freddies - so there'll be two sets of awards this years...Freddies & the FlyerTalk Awards.

same owners @:-)

I think they lost their credibility in two ways. One by having two "annual" awards within months of each other. Two by the voting process. There was a big discussion about this on Flyer Talk when these awards first came out.

Guys - this is about the Flyertalk Awards - not past history/gossip. As fti rightly said, there are other places on FT to discuss other awards which may be out there. Can we stick to discussing the Flyertalk Awards please?

Many thanks

Jenbel
Co-moderator, Communitybuzz!

As Oliver stated, this is just how it will be; since we're already winnowing down the voting pool to registered FTers only -- the cream of the business and leisure traveling crop, as it were -- we also realize that FTers are a globe-encompassing group whose knowledge is far from limited to their "home" geographical region. You'll be able to vote for any and all programs worldwide that you believe are at the top of their game.

^^