Largest hotel loyalty program honored, with 18 top three placements including best web site.

InterContinental Hotels Group, the world's largest and most global hotel company, and Priority Club Rewards, the company's guest loyalty program, won 6 first-place awards, 8 second-place awards and 4 third-place awards at the 2005 Freddie Awards, held last Thursday in New York. The Freddies are the most prestigious consumer-generated awards in the travel industry with more than 300,000 frequent travelers voting for their favorite programs this year. They are the industry's equivalent to the film industry's Academy Awards. Overall, Priority Club Rewards placed in 18 of 24 award categories.

Specifically, the program earned first-place in the following categories:

* Best Web Site - Americas
* Best Web Site - Asia
* Best Member Communication (formerly "best newsletter") - Americas
* Best Member Communication - (formerly "best newsletter") - Asia
* Best Bonus Promotion - (Double Points/Double Miles) - Americas
* Best Bonus Promotion - (Third Night Bonus Points/Miles) - Europe

Year after year, frequent travelers continue to recognize Priority Club Rewards with numerous Freddie Awards for its unique program offerings, user- friendly features and outstanding promotions like Double Points/Double Miles, which won Best Bonus (Americas) for the second year in a row.

"We continually improve Priority Club Rewards to be the easiest to use and most valuable program in the industry. For the second year in a row, we received high marks in nearly every Freddie Awards category which indicates our members agree," said Steve Sickel, senior vice president, Priority Club Rewards. "They simply prefer our program and enjoy what we offer, which is why we're the largest hotel loyalty program in the world."

Introduced by Randy Peterson of InsideFlyer magazine in 1988, the Freddies allow travelers to select their favorite frequent travel programs in the airline, hotel and credit card industries. Different from many other award programs, Freddie winners are determined by the overall merits of each program as reflected in "Value Voting" which requires voters to assign a number between 1 and 10 for each program in addition to ranking programs according to the voter's preference. The program receiving the highest average Value Vote with at least 1 percent of the overall popular vote in a category wins that category.

"The Freddie awards are a valuable recognition program because they are based on actual customer feedback," said Sickel. "We look forward to hearing what our members have to say, giving them what they want, and winning more awards year after year."

Priority Club Rewards is the largest and fastest-growing loyalty program in the hotel industry available in more than 3,500 hotels in nearly 100 countries. Membership has doubled over the past three years to more than 24 million. It is the easiest to use and offers more sought-after benefits than any other hotel loyalty program including Points Transfer, Points Purchase, no blackout dates on Reward Nights and no expiration. It is also the only hotel loyalty program to offer members the ability to redeem points their points toward hotel stays at virtually any hotel worldwide with the introduction of the Any Hotel, Anywhere Card that will be available beginning in July for members who reside in the US.