The generous program was doomed to fail as it was just not maintainable. We enjoyed it as it lasted but now have to live with the changes and at least for Europe the chain has a huge number of decent business hotels and a couple of excellent higher end properties although they can't keep up with the real luxury hotels.

The program is still decent value, burning the points at .2 is your free choice but you would not need to look to hard to get out significantly more.