Batten down the hatches! We’re in the middle of travel awards season
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of the travel industry’s awards season. It’s the time of year when every other media organization releases its list of “best” airlines, hotels and cruise lines.
Best airlines. Hah. That’s funny.
It started with the release of the laughable World Travel Awards and then spread like a virus to lots of news organizations, large and small.
For example, Conde Nast Traveler just released its annual Readers’ Choice Awards. The survey is heavy on rhetoric — at one point, the magazine calls the survey participants “passionate travelers for whom no island is too remote, no city too challenging, no hotel too untested. Winners all!” — but a little light on methodology.
We’re left to wonder how the magazine arrived at its “finalists” how many surveys were mailed and what the response rate was. Maybe that’s in the magazine story.
The travel industry, meanwhile, fell over itself to capitalize on the awards. More than a few companies sent out press releases reminding journalists that they’re loved by the readers of Conde Nast Traveler.
Not to be outdone, Forbes now publishes a list of the 400 “very best” hotels and resorts, as determined by a panel of experts and executives (some of whom, I should mention by way of full disclosure, I consider to be friends).
But the methodology is pretty loosey-goosey, too. “They were asked to rate five-star hotels in which they recently stayed. No hotel executives participated, and the writers who reviewed the hotels did not accept a complimentary stay,” it says.
Hang on. So the hotel executives couldn’t vote on their own product. Great. But the whole “accept a complimentary stay” is problematic. Does that mean they could never have accepted a free room night from that property? Or just the last time they stayed there?
And how about other business arrangements? What if one of these resorts sponsors a Web site, column or TV show hosted by one of these experts?
It’s a slippery slope, my travelin’ friends. That’s all I’m saying.
All this isn’t to say that the awards doled out by Forbes, Conde Nast and AAA are illegitimate. Just that they are provably imperfect and should under no circumstance be taken as seriously as the industry seems to think they should.
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3 Responses to “Batten down the hatches! We’re in the middle of travel awards season”
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They tried to rename it “Least Worst Airline Still Capable of Meeting a Minimum Standard of Service and Reliability” but it wouldn’t fit on the trophy.
Would “Screwed over the least amount of passengers” work?
“Least worst” works for me.