With The Looming Hotel Program Devaluations, Will You Stay Loyal?

+1, in addition to the social/outlet aspect, for me the sharing of knowledge and opinions is the greatest benefit here.

Agree with your comments. BUT, the vast majority here travel on an employers or customers dime and thus it makes the loyalty game work better for them. To say that your hotel strategy is to get all your rooms on the BRG, or attempt to, is short sighted at best. That's what the discussion is about.

Trying to squeeze the loyalty program is one thing but using BRG as a payment tool is just shortsighted. Hotel chains and airlines track such things. I have specifically seen somone get banned from flying on an airline because he abused their rules. He wasn't doing anything illegal either but their security followed his actions and decided enough is enough. That is simply my point. There are ways to beat every system if one tries but it soon gets seriously frowned upon or they modify the rule.

But I'm not forgoing all loyalty. I have loyalty to a booking engine which provides 5-15% back, on top of often exposing the lowest available rates without necessitating loyalty to a specific hotel chain. My guess is that 50% or more of my ~100 room nights annually are not in a chain hotel. There is no value in loyalty to a chain if you're not staying in their properties. And I generally don't because the rates they offer are not competitive with the local options.

The other nights are mixed across all the chains rather than focused on just one. I could either collect a couple points here and there and eventually have low/mid status and a couple points across all the programs or just save the cash up front. I'm not going to accrue massive amounts of points in any one program with my stay patterns so I don't really try to. I take the cash back up front instead of the extended timeline value down the line when I've got enough points.

Similarly, my CC spend churning is actually pretty low. I'm not running tons of business expenses through a card or playing with gift cards at the convenience stores. A choice I've made (at least in part) and that affects how I view the overall earning opportunity picture for me. If I was pushing a half million a year in reimbursed expenses through my cards my tune might be different. Alas, I don't have a company which lets me do such. Though I'm not really all that upset about that.

I don't believe that is true. I think there is a pretty decent mix, not an incredibly one-sided skew in either direction.

Who has said that? And who is discussing that??

Yes, airlines track use and abuse of their systems. That's not surprising at all.

I've seen people get banned for lots of things, from "bump running" to abusing the voucher systems. I just haven't figured out where people staying at a variety of hotels and searching for the best fare every time comes anywhere close to abusing the system.

If you're not particularly loyal to the chain and don't do this on a regular basis, but as a one-off very intermittently and you don't accumulate points/status, and most of the time you just stick to hotels.com/cashback and stay out of branded hotels altogether, or take whatever random branded chain is a best deal, who's going to care?

I've heard tales of what you're describing too- but in the case I heard, this person was routinely buying refundable Y on overbooked flights, getting vouchers in VDB, and then refunding the ticket, in ways that made it blatant (gaining a lot of status through the VDB vouchers this way). Yes, it's obvious that if you milk something like that, the airline or hotel is going to figure it out. A very occasional at best one-off? It's like being smart about your VDBs- nobody will care that much, I think.

I was just stating things I know. We are all adults.
Hotel chains and airlines share security issues just like the CC Companies do. One would be surprised about what they know and share.

I'd dispute that you actually "know" that the Wandering Aramean is about to get blacklisted anywhere based on what he does for his travel, which is what you're implying with all this "we're all adults and I know what I know, hotels talk with each other" talk.

A BRG once in a blue moon is hardly likely to send out Inspector Javert, especially when one doesn't particularly favor chain hotels of any sort, and does most of their purchasing through consolidators.

You are "assuming" not disputing which is wrong and your post is not factual. "Dispute" away however and have a good time at it.

Speaking of facts...

So, who here in this thread has asserted that this is their strategy? Other than you, about other people who you don't name, but strongly imply are participants in this thread? Shall we discuss that fact? Who is the "you" you are referring to? Or can we agree this doesn't apply to anyone in the thread, that in fact nobody participating in this thread is ONLY getting their hotel nights by BRGs and similar "tricks", bust simply through rather mundane methods that shouldn't cause anyone to blink an eye?

Note that the person you imply does this has actually said he doesn't get ALL his rooms on the BRG.

Follow the bouncing ball. He has stated in the past that BRG was a major or big part of his hotel strategy and he tried to use it on almost very stay where the BRG was in effect.
If you want a fight go elsewhere, I'm not interested. I post about stuff that I see and if wrong, which has happened, I change the post involved or apologize. There is not one coming for this one so get over it. I'm done with this particular discussion. Go fight with someone else.

Man this thread is still going on and going nowhere... and here I thought I was gonna get some more ideas about what to do.

Maybe the admins can move it to FlyerTalk or something.

Fine, then, you've named your names and explained your point in detail (since it involves things that aren't on this thread, apparently). Thank you for making that clear. I'm sorry if asking for you to explain your point and apparently being too slow to follow the bouncing ball over a tangle of internet forums and threads (or not actually caring enough to do so) comes off as wanting a fight. That's not what I want- I wanted an explanation of why you didn't take what was being said here at face value- apparently you do not based on other things. Very well, then.

Vigorous discussions don't mean something has to be moderated or moved. what I've seen on this board that I don't on FT is that it eventually comes down to reasoning and some logic. Disagreements about how people do things are very normal and should not be excluded. Sometimes that's how we all learn about the subject at hand

Yeah, I'm all good- and if Wandering Aramean wants to go into detail about using consolidators+cashback portals, I'm all ears. I tend to think this is a great strategy for someone who wants to minimize costs, is perfectly willing to step outside the world of the huge chains, prefers cash in their pocket over aspirational properties that suddenly go out of reach when hotel programs pull the Lucy with the football routine with points scheme, and has minimal downside (since consolidator inventory is already inventory that the hotel selling it isn't fretting too much about, otherwise they'd have never given it to the consolidator in the first place).

Of course I look in to it where it is viable. But it is not something I use on every stay. I don't stay at any one brand enough for it that to make sense.

Thanks for getting the "facts" confused. Next time you plan to cite facts - especially about me - it might be useful to actually get them correct.

OOOKKAAAYYYY

I have to say I learned a lot about the subject at hand.

Regarding the poll question, though, this year will mostly be a burning points year for me based on the anticipated trips. And I'll continue to acquire points where it's economically beneficial to me, but I have no plans to acquire status through hotel stays with any program.

As discussed above there are really two issues here: loyalty perks and CC spend patterns. Hotel programs are degrading the value of points, which will certainly decrease "loyalty" of their frequent guests. However some chains have decided to increase perks, i.e. SPG suite upgrade guarantee, which will incentivize those who value such perks. Others have reduced benefits and will see a corresponding reduction in loyalty.

Credit card spend is an enitrely different matter that depends on the deal negotiated between the issuing bank and the hotel program. However it is not completely unrelated to point value. So when points are valued at < 1 cent (and further devalued this year) it would not appear to make sense to spend anything on these cards as you can easily get 1.67% return on the Chase Southwest card, and more on other cashback cards. Let's use an example:

$50k spend on 2% cashback card (Fidelity, some CapOne) = $1000
$50k spend on Chase WN card = 50k points = $835 credit towards WGA fares (i.e. not full fare tix)
$50k spend on Amex SPG = 50k SPG points plus Gold status = 2+ nights in top SPG property or more nights with points+cash. I'd value around $1000, but you could do better or worse.
$50k spend on Chase Marriott or Chase PC = 1 night at a nice Ritz Carlton or Intercontinental hotel. If you play this well you might be able to get a room that is normally valued at $400-500, which will be your ROR. Hilton will be even worse with some rooms now requiring 95k points per night!

As noted above, by diminishing the value of points they are stabbing the cardholders (and by extension the issuers) in the back. Will be interesting to see if this affects behavior - I tend to think most people won't notice except for us mileage junkies.

At least they won't notice right away. They'll keep acquiring HHonors points and then when they are getting ready, after two years of running up charges, they'll discover that their points don't get them much.

95,000 points is just a scary number from a marketing perspective. I realize the HHonors points have an inherently different value than, say, SPG, and are earned at a different rate, but it just looks horrible. Similar to a stock split, they should do an award split.

This.
It just looks awful. If these had been the rates when I walked in the HHonors door not to long ago, not knowing anything, that 70,000+ point number for a single night would have given me some serious pause. My reaction to seeing 50,000 a night was: "Seriously?"

I'm going to try and burn all (or at least make reservations) my Hilton and Marriott points before the new point levels go into effect.

I'm mostly a Marriott guy, but I think I'm going to start focusing more on SPG through spending on the SPG card now that I got Gold with the Plat Amex and we have about 70k SPG points between the fiance and I.

After I get done burning points this year, I'll probably go back to doing BRGs at Marriott which has been really good for me this year. I've been able to get rooms for 50% off or more this way in places like Boston, Maui, Honolulu, Philly, etc. I've had 13 Marriott stays in the past 6 months and all of them have been on BRGs. Does this mean I'm going to be on their naughty list?

Hilton diamond here.. letting my status lapse to gold.. and possibly get the citi card to keep gold if needed.

Burning all my Hilton points. Going to be less brand loyal and keep mid tier on a bunch of chains due to credit cards and just stay where its convenient.

Much more point redemptions vs cash stays to redeem status.

Ironically, for some places I like to travel to, Hilton MVP rates + working promos actually work better than using hotels.com and getting the 10th night free, even with the devaluation. So it's likely I'll at least throw some bones Hilton's way.

I'm going to soon find out what ICHG is up to with their lounge or upgrade option. Then we'll see where the bouncing ball takes us.