As I have been considering letting my elite status with RC expire, instead of staying with them in cities where I have hotel that I prefer more (i.e. Hong Kong, Jakarta, KL etcetera) I reviewed the benefits that higher tiers give the luxury hotel patron and realised that, well, if you have a good travel agent none of it really makes much of a difference beyond redeeming nights.
If I switched all of my upcoming stays between now and December to Hilton properties, I would comfortably make Diamond. Yet the benefits it mainly provides beyond the redemptions you already get as a luxury hotel customer booking through a consortium are not worth that much, in my opinion. My agent is a part of Signature (similar to Virtuoso), and in any luxury property worth its salt one gets upgrades, free internet access, usually complimentary transfers and many of the things that elite status in hotel loyalty programs confer. Granted, if many of your stays are at Hilton branded properties or Marriotts then one can see the appeal, but for strictly luxury properties then is there really a point?
More so, would you agree that we tend to be very picky in our choices and as such do not tend to stick to one brand (although we may 'edge' towards Pen, FS, RC, MO, etcetera)? For example, in a country where there is a 'stand alone' hotel that I find more attractive than other options, for example The Fullerton Bay in Singapore, I'll tend to stay there, loyalty be damned- that is very different to how I book flights, where I am very loyal to OW or GF as the benefits are very visible when flying with them, especially on shorter routes or, God forbid, Y!