It's definitely a valid point. For example, at a recent stay in the AMS Hilton, we were told we'd been given an executive room, which indeed was a lovely room on the top floor with a canal view - although it definitely didn't have a sofa in it, as the executive room picture on the key card did
There does seem to be a trend for hotels to remove Exec floors, and just have unlabelled "Executive Rooms" instead. Whilst I'm sure this is perfectly innocent, it suddenly becomes very difficult to see whether you've had an upgrade without seeing a "non-executive" room....
However, it's better than in some chains, where they specifically create "special" rooms just for upgrades!