Originally Posted by
sethb
While earning that second program's status, you would have been staying at their hotels with lower status, getting fewer upgrades, fewer bonus points, fewer other benefits, etc. There's a real cost to that.
But the cost may be fairly low.
I know with SPG, you can get a one-time status match. So with Starwood, you might not have to deal with more benefits rather than less.
And you can get their mid-tier Gold status very easily. With Hilton, it is also very easy to get Gold status pretty quickly. Hilton Gold is similar to Marriott Gold where you get 90% of the top level's benefits. So no major loss there either. And IHG doesn't really give much in the way of "benefits" to their top level. So no major loss there either. (OK, I'll admit that RA is good, but that really only gets you "true" benefits at ICs and you have to pay to get into the Ambassador program.)
I'm not as familiar with Hyatt's program, but I'd suspect they have either a status match or a fast-track program for status.