A. I never heard of Emeritus status. And with a 10-year qualification period, I doubt if it would have any effect on my plans. In 10 years, I plan to be either retired or dead.

B. Well, I'm staying on a very nice negotiated rate. Even with plat status and affinity credit cards, I rack up about 500 pts/night -- for me, the free night cert would be a lot more attractive.

Yes, rollover/carryover nights would be a nice thing -- not sure which would be harder to implement. But still, that's just relatively minor tweak. The "golden" certs would be a tangible thing, something you could shoot for. As described above, it would be a marketing counter to Hyatt's Faster Free Nights and Starwoods "available anytime" thing.

For me, the whole purpose of gathering points is to spend them on vacation in some nice locale -- a suite would be nice but not at all critical for my stay. So, anything that gets me nights as a reward for my spending all this time away from home is desirable.

Where I stay, there's a Hampton Inn literally across the street, a La Quinta kitty-corner across, a Candlewood Suites next door, and a Quality Inn right behind us. I have a choice of four other hotel chains, and going there requires no more than turning right instead of left at the driveway. If Marriott was offering a little sweetner like this, I'd be much less inclined to go talk to the managers of these other hotels. Good for me, good for Marriott. And I suspect it would only affect a miniscule portion of their customer base.