Westjet Announces Value Awards

I just got back from a trip to “The Big Smoke” (that’s Toronto for all you non-Canadians out there), so I thought a travel related post or two might be in order.

I flew Westjet on this trip, which I must say was a welcome change. It was a markedly better customer service experience than I remember receiving from “Canada’s national airline”. At any rate, perhaps I’ll post about that at a later date. This post is about something else.

On my way home, I looked through Westjet’s in-flight magazine UP!. In there was an article announcing their “Value Awards 2010 – The best-value travel experiences in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean.” Since this blog is about value, it seemed like perfect thing to share with you.

For the past three years Westjet has been asking their customers to share their opinions of the travel related locations that they feel offer the best value. People vote at http://www.valueawards.ca for the best values in a number of categories.

This year’s list of winners will include some places that won’t surprise you much, and many that you may never have heard of at all. You will notice the heavy Western leaning to the winners and runners-up in several categories. I can’t help but feel that the results are skewed by the fact that Westjet has a much larger customer base in Western Canada than it does in the East.

Despite that reservation, I did find the list interesting and I hope you will as well. Remember to keep in mind that these are the locations that received the most votes for best value, rather than the best at any price.

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Canadian Black Book Announces Retained Value Awards

Canadian Black Book, the company that publishes the Canadian automotive industry’s used car value “bible”, announced their fifth annual retained value awards yesterday. These awards recognize the 2006 vehicles in 17 categories that experienced the lowest average depreciation in the first four years of ownership. Black Book indicates in their press release that past performance is not a guarantee of future results, but I think we can all agree that its better than not winning.

Not suprisingly, Japanese brands dominated these awards with 13 of the 23 winners (including ties). Despite their recent troubles, Toyota took home the most awards of any brand with 6. Honda was second with 3 winners.

German nameplates had the second large block of winners with 8 of the 23 winners (including ties). BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen each had two winners.

The only American company on the list was Chrysler, with the Dodge Sprinter. I’m afraid I can’t really call this vehicle American since it is built by Mercedes-Benz and is a left over from the failed marriage of Daimler-Chrysler.

The Mini Cooper seems to stand out as the only vehicle from a brand that isn’t Japanese or German. That said, BMW owns the Mini brand and the new Mini’s have significant BMW engineering influences. Although final assembly is still done in the UK, I’m calling this one a German car too.

So that’s 13 wins for Japan, 10 wins for Germany, and 0 wins for every other country. Very interesting.

Here are the winners by category…

 

What is value?

After a multi-year hiatus I am relaunching ValueCanuck.com as a blog. I thought I would take the opportunity with my first post to discuss what value is really about.

It seems these days we too often confuse the words “value” and “inexpensive”, and seem to use them interchangeably. I see many organizations using the word “value” in their branding when what their brands really are about is “inexpensive” products and services. In my opinion, a quality service or product offered at a fair price is much more likely to offer value than a lower quality product or service at a lower price.