It's smart business. We here on FT are unusually privy to a slew of info that average Joe/Jill is never aware of. Starwood (along with thousands of other organizations) targets its offers so that it is a stretch fo the consumer to achieve.

It's akin to a sales organization with three sales reps. One rep has NY State (incl Metro NYC), one has Florida, and one has Montana. If the boss elects to kick off a sales contest, he has to tailor the contest objectives to match each sales rep's potentials. To say that a rep gets a bonus of $10,000 if s/he sells an incremental $250,000 this month might be very easy for the NY and FL reps and impossible for the schmuck in MT.

The only reason this is an issue is that FT provides a unique forum for nearly full disclosure of all offers on the table. That screws things up a little, but it really amounts to only hurt feelings. Folks need to pull up their bootstraps and move on. This is a dead issue. Targeted marketing offers are here to stay.