Originally Posted by
missydarlin
Being too strict basically says to your Diamonds that they are a bunch of scammers who need to be reigned in. Not exactly a friendly and welcoming message to those who you consider your best customers.
Do I think that "purely" speculative booking is uncool? Absolutely. But I think to try and manage the "intent" of a few uncool people by punishing the rest who are A) good customers, and B) intend to use those nights, is unreasonably spiteful. I think there are ways to mitigate any abuse without taking the benefit away completely.
Yes - and the way to mitigate the abuse is to only allow conversion of award bookings from points to FFN (BWB, NBT etc) once earned as had been done in the past. At least people are limited to booking only what is in their accounts (I try to maintain about 200,000 points for this purpose) - even someone with 1,000,000 points (and I'm betting that is extremely rare) would only be able to book 40 or so nights at a top category 6 property. This "rewards" loyal customers with some track record - and is really no different than "regular" point redemption awards. I know it penalizes "newcomers" some but also frees up award inventory that is otherwise "hogged" by "speculative" bookings.