Originally Posted by akr1970akr

If one didn't have the 4NF, one could use portals, OTA discounts (like the constant hotels.com 10% discounts), and even discount gift card purchases to sort of get close to that 25% discount. But those are generally less available at high season, like school breaks or holidays. And hotel choices will be narrower than the concierge, who can book most properties if you do the legwork and point them the right way. And OTA channel wouldn't generally give loyalty rewards the way that booking through the concierge usually does i.e. they can append your number to the reservation. I think that 4NF aggregate discount is a reasonable proxy for what the full service travel agent commissions are for whoever Citi is using for this. Presumably they maybe get 18% or something, and citi gives out 25% to the customer, so maybe its a wash or close to it.

But the business problem remains that a small sliver of the holders use most of the total dollar value of the benefit, and the rest just churn the card. And this seems like the main perk, rather than an ancillary one where maybe that might be acceptable (like a Priority Pass where I suspect many US customers may not get any value if they are not using airports covered under that program, although the restaurant credits have helped a lot)

I can't really see Citi - the #3 card issuer - and a huge player in consumer banking not having anything in their product lineup to face off against CSR, or AXPlat. And they have had versions over the years (Chairman card etc) so its not like terra nova for Citi unlike BOFA who seems more content down at their product mix, never having had a real flagship. (Unless I misremember something?) Anecdotally, among my colleagues who are not super savvy travel hackers (other than 1 kid), the CSR is common. One of my coworkers who recently dropped down from CitiGold to CitiPriority had never heard of the Prestige and basically rejected my suggestion that he consider it (back when he was CG), and instead went CSR. Citi has to fix that issue, banking clients are the low hanging fruit I think.....