Among the big winners were Marriott Rewards, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, Virgin Atlantic Airways Flying Club, Virgin Blue Velocity, Starwood Preferred Guest and many more.
This program has been named in honor of the Maverick airline entrepreneur Sir Freddie Laker who took on the big legacy airlines as competition. I feel that the awards have betrayed their namesake because they habitually place the big contenders in the winning roles. The judges are not impartial because they obtain advertising and other paybacks from the winners.
sure, there were More than 700,000 Freddie ballots, but the campaigns sent out by the big players encouraged members to vote and many of the voters had no experience with the airlines and hotels in the running. Many of the travelers are loyal to the program that they have joined and are not in a position to compare because they are blissfully ignorant about what they are missing out on. Take it from me I can assure you that there is NO conflict of interests reflected from my blog.
I have been staying at many of the Marriott hotels as they opened over the past 25 years. When I was living in Asia, Europe, S. America and Africa, I stayed at Starwood, IHG and Hyatt hotels because there were no Marriott hotels at the time. It was Hyatt that gave me a taste for the Regency floor (AKA Club or concierge lounge). The lounge was a welcome oasis in exhausting countries like Indonesia and refuge from the maddening crowd in Acapulco. At that time Marriott grew because they had the US market.
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