Citi's 'grand strategy' in the cards space is to be shifting away from competing in the rewards segment and essentially competing by shifting their marketing spend over to balance transfer / 0% interest rate offers on their cards. One can look at their investor day presentations for discussion of this.
They may have decided those travel perks don't sway customers much on the no fee level of rewards cards, so they are dropping those benefits.
We'll see.
It seems like whatever actions they take, some other part of the firm / cards division will go off and do the opposite anyways.
To me, the main things to watch are
a) is Citi broadly changing their approach to card retention? there seems to be enough anecdotal evidence from Citi AA and Barclays AA cards that something has changed there. I think that's at AA's behest. I think they want to close some AA card accounts, so that they can start expiring dormant AA mile accounts. The cards make it easy to keep miles alive. I also think with rising baggage fees, they want to stop folks who put a $100 spend a year on the cards (maybe earning $2 for AA) from getting $50-$100 worth of free bags a year. one benefit of Citi cards - not so well understood/communicated by the Chase fanboys/bloggers - is that the long run cost of keeping their cards tends to be low because of generous retention. (Maybe excepting Prestige in recent times)
b) what other soft gutting of the TYP program/Portal are happening? Expedia, loss of Concierge Booking, etc. Although Premier currently gets the 1.25x booking for hotels through the portal, that's not a stated benefit in the current benefit guidebook. I'm assuming they will take that way in September of 2019, when other changes kick in. The question will be what else happens - will prices get worse in the portal? will offerings get narrowed further? will ticketing only be for Basic Econ. tix but at regular Econ prices etc.
c) are other card benefits walked back on like the changes in Travel Insurance etc. We actually use these. In the last year I've had a (free) emergency roadside service call, and a 90 day purchase protection for damaged goods kick in. Those are probably worth $250 all in to me, and its likely that I would average $100+ per annum on that. These are easier for them to get away with as normally people don't see them.