I’ve stayed at Hilton Hotels on occasion over the past few decades and I use one of their loyalty cards because I’m willing to put up with their occasional mail about my account in exchange for an occasional free room.  I opted for email because a simple rule can automatically delete it as soon as it hits my inbox, and that’s way faster than tossing their envelope into the garbage. But today’s Hilton email wasn’t automatically trashed, and I opened it. These presumptuous twits are emailing out requests to ‘Vote us a ‘10’ in the 2009 Freddie Awards!’

A phalanx of Freddies: Like fancy vodka bottles lined up on the bar.

The Freddie Awards are where frequent travelers ‘voice their opinions about their favorite frequent travel programs’. They bill it as ‘the frequent traveler’s answer to the Oscar, Emmy and Grammy Awards’.  Given how poorly the travel industry treats customers, I guess they needed to find some way to feel good about themselves. What a crock.

You can guess my opinion of Hilton’s spam. It’s as clueless as calling me in the middle of dinner to take a survey about the evils of telemarketing. They should know by now that we welcome telemarketers — and ‘vote for me’ email — about as much as we would welcome investment solicitations from Bernie Madoff. I hope they are smart enough not to ring people in their rooms asking them to plump the ballot box for their hotel chain. You’d think the Hilton name has suffered enough embarrassment from Conrad’s great grand-tart. (My apologies to purveyors of quality, tasty pastries.)