Celebrating 30 years of miles and points. The world's oldest, as well as the first ever frequent flyer program AAdvantage®, the program that started it all, turns 30 on May 1st this year. The mileage Guru himself, Randy Petersen invites you to celebrate 30 years of miles and points. We will take a look back -- and towards the future. The leaders in the loyalty industry will join Randy, including Maya Leibman, President of AAdvantage Jeff Foland, President of United Mileage Plus Jeff Zidell, Vice President of Hyatt Gold Passport Jeff Robertson, Vice-President of Loyalty Programs, Delta Airlines Joshua Berwitz, Vice President, Membership Rewards Partnerships And more guests to be confirmed! What to expect Randy will take you for a ride through the highlights of the last 30 years of miles and points Each of his guests will have a 15 minute presentation and after, there will be a round table and YOU can ask these industry leaders questions Lunch is included. Please register here: http://guestlistapp.com/events/48657 Oh, you might want to check out this event the following day as well: www.ftuniversity.com Brought to you by American Express
Funny how the various events for this weekend are not presented in a cohesive manner! I'm also curious that this is a 'sponsored' event, and yet there is a charge for it! I imagine that this is more for the 'serious' travel programs geeks!
I can give some information on that. The FT Awards volunteers had quite the task of putting up a replacement to fill the void of the Freddies last year in November. As we all know, the event was a huge success and unfortunately we couldn't accommodate everyone at the awards in Houston. For obvious reasons, we wanted voting on the 2010 programs and campaigns to happen early in the year, so we moved the awards to April, the original Freddies weekend. That left us just about 5 months to put together another event. To get bigshots like Maya, Jeff and Jeff to commit to an event like this, takes forever. That's why we had to wait to launch it till now. For next year, we will of course launch it all at the same time. Yes, we have sponsors for all the events, but there is a significant cost to all of this. The dinner and award ceremony at Citi Field has a cost of over 125 USD per person for only the event itself, but we are only charging 50 dollars per person. The industry does not pay. The Friday event is just about break even, while the Saturday event (with free drinks on Friday night) is loosing money. All in all, we are on the plus side, but for what you're getting, I think the prices are quite fair for NYC. The Frequent Traveler Education Foundation is a non profit organization with no employees (yes, all of us actually have real jobs), just a bunch of passionate frequent traveler geeks who think it's important to put on events so frequent travelers get to meet and do stuff not possible for the public. And if there's any money left, we always give that money away to charity.
I'd enjoy attending this event... if I wasn't redeeming some of my miles to fly around the world at that time!
I'd enjoy attending this event if it wasn't being held on my daughters college grad date...for some reason I feel compelled to celebrate the end of the tuition years .
Tommy, Thanks for putting this together! Unfortunately I'll be in Jamaica enjoying drinks on the beach that day. Otherwise...I'd be there. I know everyone will have a great time! Thanks again, Chris
Folks, We've confirmed a couple of very interested panelists and speakers. The line up is now as follows: Maya Leibman, President of AAdvantage Jeff Foland, President of United Mileage Plus Jeff Zidell, Vice President of Hyatt Gold Passport Jeff Robertson, Vice-President of Loyalty Programs, Delta Airlines Joshua Berwitz, Vice President, Membership Rewards Partnerships Moderator: Randy Petersen
Tommy, you're a class act and first class organizer. I'm sure event will be another smash hit. I'll be there in spirit. ^
