A fantastic weekend of fun at the FTU Amsterdam!
It's been a great weekend spending time with travel junkies and meeting a whole load old and new friends at the FTU Amsterdam. I really hope those who came managed to learn a whole load of skills and tricks.
I'll find a way to distribute the full slide pack for participants, but in the meantime here is the (slightly reduced) slidepack I promised. For now they are in .pptx format, as the PDF conversions are acting a little strange:
As this was the first international FTU, we are really hoping you can provide feedback as to what you enjoyed, what areas needed improving etc. You can find the contact details on the FTU website.
Since I'm not an organiser, I can't really influence how things are run too much, but from a personal level I'd be delighted if those who attended my presentations could give me feedback too, either through the comments here or by emailing info[at]pointstobemade.com
I attended your advanced avios presentation and definitely learned a lot! Thank you. Before going to your presentation, all I knew about Avios was on the redemption side since it’s not that hard to collect Avios here in the USA with the Chase BA VISA. Near the end of your presentation I was going to ask about any sweet spots in the redemption side but then I realized it’s not really possible to have a sweet spot when the redemption award chart is distance based!
Having gone to both FTU and FTU Advanced, I felt FTU Amsterdam was just as intimate as FTU Advanced in Chicago given the size of the group. All the speakers answered everyone’s questions that ranged from beginner to advanced and there was a good number of breaks to allow people to interact/socialize with each other.
In the future, I think having at least 1 or 2 interactive sessions on ITA Matrix or ExperFlyer or KVS or Award Booking in general may be helpful to future participants.
Also, I must have missed the memo but I would have loved to have gone to the skyteam tour at AMS on Friday. Not sure how I missed it but I didn’t recall seeing any mention of it on the website. Overall I had a great time! Thx!
PS. I did find it a relief to go to an FTU that truly focused more on earning miles through travel versus just on churning credit cards.
I agree with Everything Joey says. Btw Hi joey! Great to have met you! And Tim too! I do have to say that I do think there are sweet spots with Avios, you just need to search flights within their distance chart. Usually great value to from South America, and also from HEL to ASIA since the route is shorter. Next year we should check more deep into Other programs too.