Originally Posted by
GUWonder
Hilton HHonors is to the US hotel "loyalty" program industry as Delta SkyMiles is to the US airline "loyalty" program industry. The customer-unfriendly changes get hammered into place, customers pay the price and are none the better off for it in the main. They have no shame, are dealing with a largely ignorant/apathetic/distracted customer base, and are not in the line of sight of government regulators or media hounds. These kind of customer-unfriendly moves from Hilton end up sticking much like they end up sticking at Delta Air Lines.
Aside from your ridiculous claim that financial incentives for HHonors management members are directly linked to this 'SkyMiles like robbery', please stop postulating this nonsense.
Anderson is one of the few airline managers in the US, who knows how to run an airline (mostly because KLM told him how to run one and after quite some years of learning, he was able to take it to the next level on an even bigger scale. Unfortunately, dealing with Air France is subject to far more obstacles in comparison to the very result-oriented approach of KLM in the 1990's)
So only because some posters on FT ( who were very good gaming the system ) lost out in the process of some changes ( mostly limited to some resorts in French Polynesia ), it does not mean that those programs are bound for ultimate failure now.
As pointed out numerous times by myself already, most members will appreciate the changes and as also pointed out by some other posters, your continuous claims that HHonors is playing games with customers turned out to be plain wrong. Some properties changed their game plan and aside from that, nothing really changed to the worst. Hilton does not get their IT straight, which given the complexity of such systems is not surprising, however over the course of some weeks now, is starting to become pathetic.
On a related side note, I hope you understand that this is a business after all and that both hotel chains and hotel operators have no interest whatsoever ( same with Delta
) to lose customers in a very very challenging marketing environment ( although for some US cities, the outlook for 2012 is actually quite positive )
And do you really believe that those changes are not pre-tested first, before they make it to the market. And do you really believe that idio** are running the show at Delta, Hilton, Air Canada or Lufthansa ?