arlflyer

I'm not actually going to take the bait on your post overall, but will latch onto this part. Anyone who does any price benchmarking of chain hotels versus independent properties of similar caliber in any major city will know that the chains have "done got us good". The "loyalty" habit is a tough one to kick, and they're extracting a pretty premium from us, then getting us on the other end to think that we're making out with "free" perks. It's a beautifully-applied bit of consumer psychology that even raw, hard data can't convince us to walk away from. It's all baked into the business model and they have us exactly where they want us.

Now to the original point, how, and on what grounds, the revenue is distributed, well, that's where I bow out and don't care to get into all of the expected arguments.