Originally Posted by CJKatl

Those of us who have been with MR for years understand this. Redemption Cats are not based on the price per night of the hotel or any perceived level of the hotel. The Cats are based on redemptions during the past year. Hotels where people heavily redeem wind up higher and those where people rarely redeem are lower. What happens when there is one hotel with a lower redemption rate than the others in the area, like the Aloft was, many people will redeem and the Cat will go up. Now that the Aloft is not an inexpensive option and given that there are better hotels nearby for fewer points, it will likely drop again next year. If you look at the BKK Soi 57, Ren and JW you can see how this has played out over the years with each bouncing up and down Cats most years as members stay in the least expensive redemption of these similar hotels.

SPG did not allocate redemptions this way so an inexpensive hotel that had many redemptions like the Soi 11 Aloft are going to have jarring changes in redemptions this time.

And while there may be people who will still want to redeem points at that Aloft, hopefully most will realize the CY and 4P are better and cheaper redemptions.