Originally Posted by scubaccr

My personal suspicion being that after they published the 60/20/3 in July 2015 when Spire Status was implemented, so all IHGers were aware, not just those of us reading our FTer thread.....

Consequence was a somewhat too large a boost in RA numbers occured due to
a)Ambassadors with > 20 IC nights and many IHG nights , stayed minimal extra IHG nights to hit 60nights for RA
b)Ambassadors with > 60 IHG nights but say 10-14 or so IC nights, boosted to 20 IC nights with cheap IC's

I believe the Feb2016 removal of RA minimum from IHG t+c's, and increase in RA goal/target followed on as a necessity reaction to bring RA numbers back in line so that RA benefits could continued to honoured by under seige IC hotels

Though it looks IHG are going a bit further and culling numbers a bit more and dropping minimalist RA's (that creep in on stays/cheap IC/IHG's)... which hopefully will/has allow(ed) IHG to persuade ICs to give increased benefits to the smaller number of remaining RAs.