Originally Posted by
JackE
And the promise of lifetime status -- if valuable -- is an incentive for that future performance by those who are not yet lifetime.
Since LT was not put in place by some altruistic motives, I suspect that an additional reason for setting up a LT programme is to retain customers that maybe have passed their road-warrior phase in their career. They are of course no longer the big wallet spender they used to be but many have obtain higher personal disposable income which make them interesting to retain. This client segment might not be the big revenue creator as the notorious road warrior but on the margin still a enough profitable client segment to retain. However why these customers would get better (or equal) treatment than the road warrior putting in 100+ BiB nights is beyond me.
It could be, and I am just speculating now, that certain segments of the brands would have a larger marginal revenue impact from these customers that would justifty some extra benefits at those ... but thats an open question ...