great post Musken.

i imagine very few (almost none) of the regular posters (who do 'reviews' etc) on the luxury hotels forum are interested in their comments having more exposure outside the luxury hotels forum.

i am guessing the luxuy hotels forum was used for the BETA (in terms of conversions) because of the format of report threads there, compared to megathreads in the hotel forums and trip report threads in Trip Reports forum.

so luxury hotels forum was used, but they are not targeting luxury hotels forum (and that is not a guess) which is a very different forum compared to other forums on flyertalk. part of what makes luxury hotels forum great is that it has a pretty low profile, as do many of its posters. there are many luxury hotels forum regulars who do not 'post' anywhere else on internet, and many even have low post counts. kind of the opposite of elsewhere on flyertalk/internet.