Originally Posted by Beckles

As I said, to me it seems the article is inconsistent in the first claim that the changs are "on top of the 20%" increase compared to how they describe the changes later in the same article. In other words, though the article addresses where a handful of hotels are going, it doesn't definitively answer the question of the overall changes because of the inconsistency.
I have never agreed with that characterization as I voiced as early as October 20 in this post. I had always assumed that just like every other year, some hotels would otherwise be moving down anyway, which in the case of the increse in point levels would likely mean they would actually stay the same this year, and maybe a few hotels would move down more than one level resulting in a decrease for a small number of hotels.

The USA Today article lists a minimum of 10 hotels that are moving down in points required, which in fact would mean they are moving down two categories next year.

Originally Posted by Jailer

I think what we have here is a two-part process. The USA Today article speaks to phase one and that as part of the yearly reclassification of individual hotels 10% are going up; 16% are going down: not really big news. Phase two is the re-ordering of the category system. I visualize an excel spreadsheet where the columns stay the same and all the data (the hotels) moves to the right (causing the need to create another column on the right). This is the 20% across the board increase that the article speaks of (although it is not exactly a 20% across the board increase).

I think that the confusing thing is that both phases are happening at the same time; as the entire grid moves to the right some hotels within the grid move to the right (10%) and some to the left (16%).