I have no issue with promo's that are better for some than others as over a 12 month period usually they balance out but I have to add myself to the list that thinks an entire region excluding itself is dreadful.
I think it shows up Starwoods worst feature and that ius the nature in which the hotels and even it appears regions are seperate from eachother and Starwood really has very limited control over them. I have experienced this with issues during stays, at the end of the day Starwood has to wait for the hotel to make a decision and can actually do very little on its own or to force the hotel to speed up or do anything. It appears now an entire region can just choose to exclude itself from a promo which seems to make Starwood seem much less of a "Global" hotel group and more hotels who happen to be grouped under one banner which from loyalty program perspective is not a good thing in my mind!
I will admit this one thing will not change my choice of where to stay but I think it is a dangerous direction to be going in and maybe sets up the possibility for promo's to become more disjointed and therefore more complicated and thus more frustrating for members for SPG. It almost seems with the resort fee's, other extra charges some hotels make, promo's that dont include not just the odd hotel but regions as well the best word I can think to describe its is cheap, its nearly as bad as booking on a LCC airline you have to check all the small print these days!
What is the other Asia promotion that is being refered to as currently running, it is not the one where you have to use Mastercard is it because if there reasoning for not going with a global SPG promotion is we already have one but you ahve to pay on Mastercard then my opinion of Starwood this quarter just got much worse!