Originally Posted by
scubadu
Contrary to popular belief, large, global corporations in today's world tend to respond when they see clear data in response to a change in product, policy, or service (i.e. revenue decline, loss of volume, etc.)
What they don't generally respond to are a relative few FTers sitting in front of the glow of our monitors, day in and day out whining about things, but continuing to support the program via their spend patterns.
Money talks, "FT whining" walks... I assure you if SPG saw a clear pattern in the data that demonstrated a greater than average defection of SPG PLT customers they would take action.
Regards
You brought up some good points from a real market(eer) perspective, however one has to look a bit deeper into the agreements between the hotel chain and franchisee to really figure out who is taking the (financial) burden
( including opportunity costs, especially for breakfast ) of perks like free breakfast, a Plat/Diamond Amenity and upgrades.
Although, mainly considered a disadvantage from a customer point of view, the relatively low amount of Hyatt properties is def. a huge advantage when it comes to organizing promos, such as Faster Free Nights / Next Best Thing. Generally, more or less all international Hyatt properties are on the same page in many 'customer service' related things, an advantage chains like SPG or Hilton do not have, clearly resulting in many communication problems and service issues.
On the bottom line, however, you are absolutely right and one can take airlines as a prime example. Although the American society and media are crying about the poor service mentality of most of their airlines, those companies simply reflect and offer what the American society wants and pays for, nothing more, nothing less. It is absolutely comparable with the hotel industry...