Their intentions? Maximizing revenue and profitability.
The current target of cost cutting is elite benefits. Just look at how many Plats had a hard time changing their Megabonus this time around.

To me, it appears that Arne Sorenson is targeting elite benefits as an excessively expensive cost center and is reducing elite benefits a little bit at a time in order to cut costs. That works until you lose a large chunk of your elite customers.

This one category upgrade is just another datapoint that MI is going for short term revenue without regard to elite customer retention.

There are a few Marriott properties that I love and will book in the future - JW Lima, Sonoma Ren, Eden Roc - but I will increasingly start looking at alternative hotel chains. Hyatt and Starwood fully cover my elite desires and I can maintain top status with each of those with 25 stays/yr. Since most of my stays are one night, I only need to do 50 nights to keep top tier with them vice 75 for Marriott.

Marriott in general was always pretty stingy about upgrades. Now they are killing elite benefits with a death of 1000 small cuts. I've been unhappy with reductions in benefits in the past and stuck with Marriott. But it's now at the point where other hotel programs are handily beating Marriott on elite treatment. Marriott's elite program is quickly morphing into another Priority Club, where elite benefits are poorly defined and murky at best.

My concern is that the trend of benefit reductions will not stop until there is significant negative impact on Marriott's bottom line.