Understood completely. I've yet to ever publicly share the story of how I came to break with Marriott as my go-to and move over to SPG a couple of years back. I can assure you that the evidence would be pretty embarrassing to Marriott were I ever to air it. On a personal note, quite some years ago (before I ever knew her) my wife worked for Corporate, and was personally close with some of the family - there isn't any doubt it was the best professional experience of her life even to this day, which she speaks of longingly still.

On the bright side, setting broader loyalty programs, centralized customer service, and IT integration issues aside, hotels themselves are still made up mostly of the front-line people who operate them, and there are still plenty of gems out there (as I was recently reminded of). I remain hopeful.