I agree with everything you just said, but once people start posting how to get the 50K for under 100 bucks or once say 50 people in the same local market book rooms at the same hotel to qualify for the promo, it could make them pull future promos like that in the future. I think the majority of FT'ers have the ability and knowledge to make this work for them.

I will start by stating that for my reservations, I wasn't to successful finding lower rates on Travelocity or Expedia, however Orbitz, Travelweb, and Hotels.com seemed to have lower rates for the majority of the hotels I picked. I also noticed that after I had submitted one of my claims, 2 days later, the rates weren't there (not just on that particular date, but on various dates which they originally were there). I'm sure for every guarantee that's filled, the hotels get notified (as it is listed in the changed reservation if you look at your reservations on Hilton.com). But if a hotel gets lots of claims in a short amount of time, it will incent them to change their rates faster. Whereas if they only get a few requests over a long period of time and they are still gettig a significant amount of revenue from the other booking channel (i.e. hotels.com), then they may figure it'd be worth it to swallow the 50 bucks every few weeks to get those extra 10 rooms they wouldn't have otherwise gotten had they had a higher rate.

Again, just my 2 cents...