Serious row casts a shadow over the NTIA Awards

A serious row continues to brew regarding the National Travel Industry Awards process related to concerns within the industry that an email broadcast to their database by TA Fastrack, was aimed at circumventing the voting rules to TA Fastrack’s advantage.

It is claimed that the email alerted recipients to a method of circumventing the voting rules for the awards and industry leaders have complained to AFTA CEO Mike Hatton and he has responded to TA Fastrack that “notwithstanding that this circumvention is possible and was overlooked here, the fact is that your recommendations are outside the rules, guidance and spirit for the industry awards voting process”.

It also appears that as a result, that Mr Hatton has referred the matter to the judging committee regarding whether they will or will not accept the votes lodged for TA Fastrack in view of this situation and the non compliance with voting rules.

In documents provided to The Mole, Adrian Caruso, CEO of TA Fastrack responded to Mr Hatton, claiming he was quite upset at Mr Hatton’s recommendations to the NTIA judging committee and that the email sent out to their database was not intended to circumvent the voting rules to TA Fastrack’s advantage whatsoever.

He also claimed that TA Fastrack had received several emails and phone calls since voting started from many agencies wanting to vote, advising them that they could not vote because they received a message on their PC that ‘someone had used their PC to vote already’ and that many of these were agency owners/managers who wanted to vote ‘on behalf of the entire agency’ but unfortunately one of their staff had already done so.

Mr Caruso added that the agents obviously got upset at this fact and some emailed Question Pro (the company providing the on-line voting system for the NTIA awards) directly in the US seeking help on how to overcome this problem.  Question Pro advised them how to do so and the instructions were contained in TA Fastrack’s email to their database. 

Mr Caruso advised Mt Hatton that it was as an act of good faith, they had emailed their database advising that if anyone had any problems voting, to follow the instructions given by Question Pro and allow them to vote adding that anyone could have emailed Question Pro directly and asked the same question and therefore voted several times…….if they really wanted to.

Mr Caruso also advised Mr Hatton that at no stage did TA Fastrack intend to circumvent the voting rules whatsoever nor act against the spirit of the awards as it is not in line with their company vision, adding that they are trying to make the industry more profitable, professional and improve people’s performance.

He added that he felt that he had not broken any NTIA rules, but that rather the on-line system the NTIA Awards is using, Question Pro, and its results were not accurate, but that as a supporter of the NTIA awards he would never do anything to jeopardise them.

He urged Mr Hatton to not disqualify TA Fastrack from the NTIA Awards and to utilise a more accurate on-line survey system than Question Pro in the future and to pass on his comments to the NTIA Judging Committee.

In reply Mr Hatton confirmed that he would pass on the email to the Judges, but that if Mr Caruso had read the rules, it said very clearly, one vote per agency and that he cannot be responsible for any agency manager not controlling staff to the extent of voting that had already taken place.

He added that all agency managers reading the rules should have been aware of this ruling and act accordingly.  Irrespective of any concern, they did not have the right to try and circumvent the Awards voting process and as for the USA company, they would be advised of AFTA’s concern as they also had no right to hand out such information, given the assurances provided to AFTA at the time they were contracted.

Mr Caruso responded that after strong consideration and discussion with his team, they had decided to withdraw their nomination from the NTIA Awards of which the finalists are being announced today.

He added, that they rather withdraw than face being possibly disqualified and accused of ‘circumventing the Awards voting’ process, the facts were that the on-line voting system being used in the NTIA awards (namely Question Pro) could be overridden many times, therefore the voting system AFTA is using to determine the finalists for the NTIA Awards is not accurate nor are the awards and that he was aware of many agencies whose consultants have voted as well as the owner and manager from separate PC’s in their office….without ‘deleting the cookies’ on their web browser.

He urged Mr Hatton to seriously consider conducting the whole voting process again and using a better more accurate system.

Mr Hatton responded to Mr Caruso advising him that TA Fastrack had not made it to the finalist list anyway no matter how many votes were lodged for them and therefore the issue was semantic.

He added that AFTA had run reports to determine if any agency had voted twice and had not found one instance of double voting as that to vote and have it registered the agency had to declare their name.

He advised Mr Caruso that there be no re-run of the voting the matter is now put to rest.

The row continues and The Mole awaits with baited breath to hear the next step in this scenario which will most certainly cast doubt in the minds of some in the industry regarding the validity of the NTIA voting process, leaving aside whether it is secure and accurate or not and the relevance of whole awards process in the agency sector and range of others, all of which have been frequent matters for discussion for some time.

Report by The Mole