Originally Posted by
pinniped
I'm somewhere in the middle on this one. I see Mike's point perhaps a bit more than the OP's, but I also see the OP saying "Hey, some rules are changing, some people are getting details about a challenge, why can't you at least tell me the specs of the challenge and I'll decide whether to go after it?"
Therefore, I can see where a 10-year Diamond (who probably held Diamond "the hard way") is saying "OK, everybody willing to pay a few bucks for a Surpass card is going to get the treatment I've gotten by staying in your hotels for ten years. How 'bout a little slack just this one time?"
That's the problem. There's only a mechanism for rewarding short term "loyalty" and almost none for a virtual lifetime of loyalty.
The truth is that it isn't a loyalty program, it is a game that suckers in people who think they are going to be considered special and get rewarded for it.
Absolutely Pavlovian.
Some elites subconsciously resent the conditioning and bite the other dogs, I mean customers.
Hilton's program is cutting back and regularly not delivering what they promise because it saves them money. It is easier to blame elite inflation and competition for resources than it is to simply observe that Hilton has an economic incentive to withhold upgrades and benefits and thus is inclined to do so. The status seeker finds this explanation dissatisfying because it calls into question the very concept of participating in the program with a corporation that bends the rules or breaks them to their benefit.