Originally Posted by
scubaccr
Or maybe... Saltlake having calculated all RA renewals for Calendar Year 2019 sometime between 1st-15th Jan 2019 may then remove RA flag/status 2weeks or so early from those 2018 RA's who fail to requalify.
I will be dropping my RA status going forwards after this current 2018 year, but may stay during Jan2019 month if RA keeps flagged to 31stJan. I am not bothering to renew my RA going forwards as I find the new program +2cat/foc-lounge worse than the previous Club/Exec/Suite as I now find I am having to pay more for the costlier clubroom booking over a previous years lesser room cat to get the good suite rooms I enjoyed pre Sep2016 changes.... an especially bitter pill paying for lounge which is now included for RAs.
Yes there are still good IC's if booking Club as RA, eg IC KUL (Club Room -> Ambassador Suite) but I typically only stay there only on overnighting with MH airline transfers. imho I might as well be Ambassador and book Club Room at some IC's, so will for 2019 onwards, and can then stay a bit more at MR and HH
Yup, this is absolutely right. These days, you have to pay for higher end rooms to be "guaranteed" better rooms, and it's really, really annoying. Then again ... it's a race to the bottom everywhere, so this is just one of the boats.
Originally Posted by
Eltham
You obviously haven’t invested time in building good senior management relationships at your regular ICs. It’s worth it 😉
Although this is very true in general (and RA is certainly a great gateway to meet the senior management, as they're more likely to do it with RAs and remember them than with regular folks), it's completely not a definitive benefit. Case in point: IC ANA (Tokyo). I've done around 25 stays with them so far, and spent a bit over $20K. Yet, every time I ask for something beyond the two-level upgrade (since my corporate rate tops out at the second cheapest room), they huff, and they puff, and they throw the book at me, and I escalate. I'm really tired of this. I miss the old 'suite' requirement because I
still end up getting it whenever it's available today, it just requires a
lot more fighting than it should.
Of course, there was a guy in the lounge yelling and screaming that he demands an upgrade because he's stayed at this hotel
95 times, so maybe I'm just cattle class having been there a quarter of that...