Conversations with two other long-term RAs lead to mixed reviews on the new RA Club Access benefit:

Two of us have had a travel pattern where the majority of ICs we stay having been giving Club Access traditionally. With these hotels, the addition of Club Access isn't really a plus. In fact, it seems to have been a minus, since it seems that the upgrade itself has been less generous than before and they stick to the "two category" upgrade which is to say Standard->Superior->Deluxe. In other words, regular room to regular room + slippers to regular room + slippers and bathrobe.

The other guy has been staying primarily in hotels which have not included Club access, or where you would choose Club OR an upgrade, so he thinks this has been a net plus.

We're all over the map about amenities -- seems like the free gifts in addition to the fruit basket/mineral water have been going away, and instead you can get bonus points (ranging from 600 to 1500), but that's been inconsistent for a while, so the fact each hotel has a different choice of offers isn't new. But I've had hotels which give you more points if you don't take the fruit basket, others that offer a "minibar credit" as one of the options (presumably for the non-liquids part of the minibar), etc. The "free drink" coupons have also been less than consistent, if at all offered.

The timing and fulfilment have been messy; all of us went for one or two months without a current RA card -- we got our cards and BOGO certs just recently but not the whole welcome package (incl. points, luggage tags, etc.) But at least this came earlier in the year. We're confused that our RA status expires at the end of the year, because unless renewal happens earlier, say Dec 1st, we'll have issues again next year with membership expiring before renewals come out..

Plus many of the changes really haven't been well communicated -- we find out more from FT and other online sources than we do from ICH, which is par for the course.

Net-net, it seems that ICH means well but the end result will be more hotels sticking to the rules. We couldn't give it either a resounding thumbs up, or a thumbs down, so far, it seems to be a "push" ...