At almost 70, my business traveling days are effectively over, but looking back 50 years to the first of a number of stays at the grandest of "motels", the old Marriott on Stemmons in Dallas, and two decades later, the JW on Pennsylvania in Washington, then what seemed the best hotel in which I had ever stayed (although with a notable decline in that level of service in stays in the last 5 years), like others here, the principal appeals of Marriott were CONSISTENCY of product and staff in the front of the house and in catering who acted as if they understood that the customer is nearly always right, even when the customer was too stupid to know better. When it came to event menus, setup, AV, and my presence in the hotel being noted, Marriott signified "Professional" (and in my last dealings in San Antonio, still does, albeit with over-priced banquet menu).

My grandfather had known and stayed with Mr. Hilton when he was a inn keeper for drummers, oil scouts, land men and con artists in West Texas. Bop described Hilton to me (a young boy) as a hotel man interested in his guests. In my case, two of the most impressive figures I've ever been introduced to were Forrest Mars, then the biggest M in the M&M bag and the senior Mr. Marriott. Both had built companies crafted in their own image, and both seemed to expect from those who worked for them not just "loyalty", but an appreciation of the employees' roles as the public face of those companies.

I knew what to expect at a JW and at a Fairfield Inn and stayed in both. I looked forward to a Ren, but was never really comfortable with the CY profile, rates often too high for the competitive niche.

I guess I lost status last year, and am burning off a stack of points this year in Vienna and Prague, with another couple of nice future stays left in my account which had climbed to close to 200,000 a couple of times, so I'm no more than a doddering kibitzer in the grand scheme of things. But even doddering, I'd like to see some space in those glossy coated paper, brightly printed mailers devoted to Sgt. Joe Friday's old maxim, "Just the facts!" I and most other hotel guests don't like unpleasant surprises, and a lack of warning makes even modest cut backs or changes discomfiting.