Hotel points earned for booking conference rooms may pose ethical challenges if awarded directly to individual planners rather than organizations. Who gets these free nights is sometimes anyone’s guess.
Marriott Bonvoy, the world’s largest loyalty program with more than 200 million members, rewards individual members, while other programs such as World of Hyatt allow members to create corporate accounts to use points toward future events .
Awarding points to individuals can lead to all kinds of tricky situations: Does the planner hold the rewards account, or will a more senior employee step in and be expected to manage the points? What happens to the points if the account holder leaves the company? Is it acceptable to include negotiation points as part of a planner’s compensation?
Tammy Routh, senior vice president of global sales for Marriott International, recognizes the challenges meeting planners face and says her company is taking action. “Our B2B customers have expressed concerns about being unable to open accounts in the name of their company or organization. We have listened to this feedback and will continue to research potential solutions in the future.
different methods
Many planners use points from personal accounts to benefit the company in a variety of ways: VIP travel upgrades, workers’ compensation rooms, on-site inspections and employee travel, and last-minute accommodations if participant or employee travel is delayed. Non-travel uses include speaker gifts, client incentives, disaster rooms and employee incentives. Some will negotiate double or triple points to reward their team members.
Industry spokesperson and educator Angela Leighton has worked for two companies that approached the problem in different ways.
“At my previous company, the CFO opened a second account where all points were deposited and used for employee travel. But at another company, a random person from the HR department managed the account. She changed departments and retained to use all your points instead of using them for travel as originally planned.
It was “very frustrating,” she said. “It is unethical to have a rewards points account managed by employees who are not part of executive leadership because the points are not managed in a transparent manner.”
moral hard line
Some people think that keeping hotel points entitles them to do all the heavy lifting for the conference. “When an executive travels and the organization pays for the travel, the executive collects the points themselves. What’s the difference?” said Susan Avery, managing director of Andromeda Group.
There’s also the question of whether planners will make hotel decisions based on points or stop considering a brand because of its points policy. Many large public companies have ethics policies that include points, and employees must sign to agree to their use. Some companies have gift policies, and taking points directly violates those policies.
For companies without a policy, planners have two options: use their personal points account or find a solution. A planner has an account set up in her name, but using a different account number than her personal account. Points from all contracts she signs are deposited into the account, which she makes public in her office.
The Event Industry Council’s CMP Code of Ethics outlines the ethics of integration. Newly Certified Meeting Professionals (CMPs) agree to never use their position “to seek improper personal gain and to promptly disclose all potential and actual conflicts of interest to appropriate parties.”
Planner Pamela Esbrandt Wynne teaches Meeting Professionals International (MPI) Fundamentals Bootcamp: Meeting Basics and has been an educator for over 20 years. “It’s an ethical question. There’s a huge difference between the points you get for your own personal travel and the points you get as a meeting planner for a 500-person meeting worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The gatekeeper, administrative or financial team vs. the meeting planner Just work hard for the project or the company. Why can you get the points your company paid for?
