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Old Dec 30, 2025, 3:56 am
FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 5:31 pm
  #31  
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Originally Posted by IBJoel
I would have liked more input on this category specifically. I saw a record of 200 nights earned in a year, which I found pretty insane, so I halved it.
​​​​​​So badges are a combination of the honor system, what the user assumes nights / miles means, and whether they find how to adjust. Android dark mode doesn't seem to have a badges option under edit profile, unless I force reload in desktop mode). I wonder if the UI team could have made it adjustable by clicking on one's own badge/badge "holder" on a post.

I now wonder if the number of 'airline miles' was itended to convey frequent flyer miles earned? (Rather than miles flown, which I assumed). A friend was confident they only earned 500k airline miles but 5+ million airline points on different airline that termed it accordingly

For hotel nights earned, how do you think folks will consistenly record an example of 350k Hyatt points earned, usable for 100 nights at a Category 1, or usable in full for 7 nights at a Cat7.
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Last edited by expert7700; Oct 2, 2024 at 5:47 pm
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 5:51 pm
  #32  
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Originally Posted by IBJoel
How many free nights you earned this year. I will admit that this was the most difficult badge to gauge. No shade to our anonymous research group, but I would have liked more input on this category specifically. I saw a record of 200 nights earned in a year, which I found pretty insane, so I halved it.
That's definitely an edge case!

Originally Posted by IBJoel
See above for comments for countries and FT profile age but, essentially, while I recognize there are 200 countries (give or take), visiting even 10 is an extremely privileged position to be in. Less than 5% of the developed world has travelled to more than 30 countries. BUT a 100 countries badge will be coming.
True, however, FT is privileged by it's design - frequent travelers who tend to skew wealthy. The whole concept of mileage running is foreign to most regular folk.
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 6:12 pm
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Originally Posted by expert7700
​​​​​​So badges are a combination of the honor system, what the user assumes nights / miles means, and whether they find how to adjust. Android dark mode doesn't seem to have a badges option under edit profile, unless I force reload in desktop mode). I wonder if the UI team could have made it adjustable by clicking on one's own badge/badge "holder" on a post.

I now wonder if the number of 'airline miles' was itended to convey frequent flyer miles earned? (Rather than miles flown, which I assumed). A friend was confident they only earned 500k airline miles but 5+ million airline points on different airline that termed it accordingly

For hotel nights earned, how do you think folks will consistenly record an example of 350k Hyatt points earned, usable for 100 nights at a Category 1, or usable in full for 7 nights at a Cat7.
With the lack of industry standards for points and rewards, a lot of these are just going to boil down to your personal interpretation, at the end of the day and whatever arguments people want to have about that... talk amongst yourselves
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 6:30 pm
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Originally Posted by IBJoel (Post # 7)
We tried fixing the placeholders, but just couldn't come up with a solution. It's still being worked on.
For the time being, changing the background hexagon color from gray to white would help many cell phone users (my usual viewing mode).
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 6:36 pm
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Originally Posted by IBJoel
How many free nights you earned this year. I will admit that this was the most difficult badge to gauge. No shade to our anonymous research group, but I would have liked more input on this category specifically. I saw a record of 200 nights earned in a year, which I found pretty insane, so I halved it.

See above for comments for countries and FT profile age but, essentially, while I recognize there are 200 countries (give or take), visiting even 10 is an extremely privileged position to be in. Less than 5% of the developed world has travelled to more than 30 countries. BUT a 100 countries badge will be coming.
The "free nights" section took a while to populate in my area, but it's there now.

If it's meant to be "free nights stayed this year," then I call BS even on 100 nights. Seriously? Honestly? In calendar year 2024 to date?

I think this one would be better served by "free nights stayed lifetime" or some such.

And I still think a badge for number of DOs attended lifetime would be popular.
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 7:17 pm
  #36  
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Originally Posted by IBJoel
How many free nights you earned this year. I will admit that this was the most difficult badge to gauge. No shade to our anonymous research group, but I would have liked more input on this category specifically. I saw a record of 200 nights earned in a year, which I found pretty insane, so I halved it.
Earned? Or do you mean “stayed”? I just earned a ton of Marriott points that will eventually be a certain number of free nights, but until I actually book and stay, I don’t know how many. And I bought a bunch of Hyatt points and used them for award nights… hardly free nights, but they are award nights, so do they count? Then again, award nights booked with points from credit cards aren’t actually free either…

I am not trying to parse words here, but when I just went through the settings, I figured it simply meant how many nights per year I am staying in a hotel, and went with that. Seems to be a more meaningful metric, to be honest.

Originally Posted by DenverBrian
I think this one would be better served by "free nights stayed lifetime" or some such.
And I would have no idea how to estimate that. So it becomes a meaningless number, and I would just skip it.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to count the number of countries I have visited. Do airport layovers count?
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 7:28 pm
  #37  
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Originally Posted by DenverBrian
The "free nights" section took a while to populate in my area, but it's there now.

If it's meant to be "free nights stayed this year," then I call BS even on 100 nights. Seriously? Honestly? In calendar year 2024 to date?

I think this one would be better served by "free nights stayed lifetime" or some such.

And I still think a badge for number of DOs attended lifetime would be popular.
Originally Posted by IBJoel
With the lack of industry standards for points and rewards, a lot of these are just going to boil down to your personal interpretation, at the end of the day and whatever arguments people want to have about that... talk amongst yourselves
I would suggest "Yearly Hotel Reward Nights" is not a useful metric. For example those generally using "Accor Live Limited" are at a disadvantage as such are not a thing with that program.

"Yearly Hotel Bed Nights" would be much more indicative.
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 7:33 pm
  #38  
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What is a "Lifetime Airline Mile"?

Is that lifetime miles flown in a aircraft? Or, is it an Airline Mile (or point) earned from a reward program?
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 7:55 pm
  #39  
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Originally Posted by serfty
What is a "Lifetime Airline Mile"?

Is that lifetime miles flown in a aircraft? Or, is it an Airline Mile (or point) earned from a reward program?
Ditto on this question too!

Butt-In-Seat I'm just north of 3MM,
Are we counting Mileage earn by flying or CC, then thats awhole different ballgame...
Or Just Elite Miles earned lifetime via Revenue Tickets?

Ibjoel, might want to consider a 100/125/150 and All on the Countries Visited Badge
I can easily think of 3-5 FTers on the Trip Report forum who've hit those numbers
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 8:44 pm
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I don't this it is intuitive to measure air miles on a lifetime flown basis but hotel nights on a current annual earned reward basis, Especially when you look at the values for each.

Hotel reward nights as explained above cannot be measured in most programs because the redemption levels are dynamic. There is some confusion here.

Air miles is subject to interpretation, you should change the wording to "miles flown" or "miles earned".

However, to make this simple and clear all badges should be lifetime based: countries visited, air miles flown, hotel nights stayed. Cash and reward miles/nights both count. There is too much left to individual interpretation which will make the badges less meaningful.
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 9:27 pm
  #41  
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Originally Posted by IBJoel
Looks like some people didn't read my immediate follow-up post in this very thread
I read (and replied to) it... Guess the that I intended didn't come through.
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 10:40 pm
  #42  
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For those using desktop version on iPhone, the Badges are at bottom left of MyFlyertalk.

photo. Hth.


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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 11:43 pm
  #43  
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Originally Posted by Short hair Francis
Ibjoel, might want to consider a 100/125/150 and All on the Countries Visited Badge
I can easily think of 3-5 FTers on the Trip Report forum who've hit those numbers
Ibjoel has already said that 100 countries badge *is* coming (which is the point I came to this thread to make but has now been asked many times and replied to three times)
I think it is necessary as I can honestly claim 50 countries, but I am just a fairly lightweight holiday traveller. Many of the great and good here are well north of 100 and it doesn't seem right that I have the same badge. It does seem to get exponentially harder to tick places off the list once you start getting above 125, so I can see a point to having those higher badges, but you have to remember what they are for. They are not there for a competition to show off for the top people, they are there to make people feel good about what *they* have achieved so they engage with the site more and generate additional advertising revenue. So there needs to be a large cohort with the top badges. I presume this is also why the other badges are as they are. They are there because it's what the advertisers think is useful for their demographic and for them.
A lot of people never leave their own country which will skew the global travel statistics and some geographies make totting up the early badges almost trivial. So 10 countries might seem like a lot to someone in Kansas, but someone from The Netherlands would probably wonder why you didn't get out more. But as pointed out, here on FT there are probably enough with 100+ to make it a useful badge.
On the flip side, x million milers seems to be mostly a US thing. Because non-US airlines tend not to give rewards based on total mileage I don't think people elsewhere count it as often.
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Old Oct 2, 2024 | 11:53 pm
  #44  
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What about some other badges? For example Lounges visited/IDB's/Op Upgrades/Lounges barred from - must be lots of other ideas for this. Also I need the 100 countries badge.
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Old Oct 3, 2024 | 12:43 am
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Originally Posted by DaveS
What about some other badges? For example Lounges visited/IDB's/Op Upgrades/Lounges barred from - must be lots of other ideas for this. Also I need the 100 countries badge.
I can still remember when Trip Advisor brought in badges. A lot of the main contributors left shortly afterwards. But as was pointed out, those people weren't the ones bringing in the revenue to the site, so they didn't really care, the badges were to engage those masses not the main contributors.
But you will have noticed that the site stopped being useful shortly afterwards as well, I certainly stopped trusting any of its content. Let's hope the same thing doesn't happen here.
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