It is that time of year again: voting is now open for the 2017 Freddie Awards — and greater than 100,000 voters had already cast their votes on the first day of voting.
The final day of voting for your favorite frequent flier and frequent guest loyalty programs will be on Friday, March 31, 2017. You may cast a ballot for your favorite frequent travel loyalty program in one of three geographical regions: The Americas; Europe/Africa; and Middle East/Asia/Oceania.
The Freddie Awards
The 2017 Freddies Awards will take place on Thursday, April 27, 2017 in Jersey City. Past venues have included the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta and the Museum of Flight in Seattle — as well as various hotel properties in Fort Lauderdale, New York, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Colorado Springs and the District of Columbia…
…and when it rains, it pours: an unexpected forecast of inclement weather in 2016 caused the Freddie Awards — initially planned as an outdoor event — to take over the new T-Mobile Arena on the legendary Strip in Las Vegas instead.
Introduced in 1988 by Randy Petersen — who is the founder of InsideFlyer — the Freddies have grown in stature and importance to become the most prestigious member-generated awards in the travel loyalty industry. The goal of the Freddie Awards is to give voice to the frequent traveler; and to honor the efforts of an industry which counts greater than 300 million members worldwide.
The results of the first Freddie Awards were announced by the premier issue of Frequent — a humble newsletter which was the precursor to InsideFlyer — and one thing is for certain: Trans World Airlines, Continental Airlines, US Airways and Eastern Airlines will not be winners at the Freddie Awards this year.
In 1988, thousands of voters cast ballots for the Freddie Awards. That number increased exponentially to 2.9 million ballots in 2013; and has reached approximately 3.5 million ballots in 2016. Balloting has been available in English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Korean and Arabic — and Turkish and Hindi have been added for 2017, bringing the total number of different languages to thirteen.
Summary
What has become a vaunted tradition of the Freddie Awards throughout much of its history are the open calls for voters — “the voice of the frequent flier”, as Randy Petersen famously calls it — to attend. Considering the space limitations of the different venues, it has become a hot ticket to get — especially as the tickets have been available free of charge.
“It’s always rewarding to see frequent fliers waiting to voice their opinions”, said Randy Petersen.
Please click here if you are interested in attending the Freddie Awards this year…
…and cast your votes today.
All photographs ©2015 by Brian Cohen.
