How about spending 30+ nights at a single RC at $400+/night? And then having that same RC ask if this is your first time here, after you have been waiting for five minutes at an unmanned check in desk on a Monday night? Guess I must be confusing that RC memory with the Four Points I was really staying at. My bad.

You’re right - service isn’t just about upgrades. In my mind it would include recognition at the front desk as a repeat guest, remembering room preferences, housekeeping done before I return from work for the day, concierges who actually call back after they agree to by a certain time, and accurate folios reflecting all charges not being sent two days after my “final” folio has already been expensed to my employer. Unfortunately, these are all examples of areas where I have had repeat issues with RCs.

The service experience, one could argue, also could include elements of the physical guest ecosystem which contribute, such as working door locks, amenities (e.g. gyms) which are online and not malfunctioning, and clubs which are properly stocked. Again, RC seems to have trouble in this space, whereas places like FS and Conrad manage to get it right.

I also love the hotel apologists’ “have your cake and eat it too” argument - that chain loyalists are owed nothing unless it was earned there on the spot at that property. As if the hotels aren’t getting a huge amount of business pushed their way through that same network. If that is the case, then those RCs should just spin right off again - they’ll cut tons of overhead like bad MR IT and Arne’s salary, and according to your logic they don’t need the MR network and its bunch of lowlife hanger-on elites.

Nice try, though, at making this RC service sound so metaphysical and elusive that those of us who think contrary to you are clearly just too uncultured to recognize service when it hits us in the face. But what I have lived over months in RCs just doesn’t align.