Originally Posted by MSPeconomist

Of course hotels often cut costs if this helps them to increase profit, but they're contractually obligated to honor Bonvoy program benefits if they wish to maintain their Marriott family brand affiliation. Upgrades (at certain brands, if available, etc.) are a published program benefit of some status tiers which are earned. Hotels can't just decide that they don't want to honor upgrades because they have very low occupancy.

I've read this entire thread, although not all at once, and I've been wondering whether anyone was soft landed and by how many tiers. In other words, is the evidence that soft landings are discretionary (like Marriott sometimes wouldn't drop someone's status at all if they had been at that level for at least several years) or is the "rule" now apparently that everyone gets exactly the status that was earned? If it's discretionary, does it matter if the former status was comped or earned through a match/challenge? Does it matter if someone was close to the threshold or had high spend?

To me, it's surprising that someone would drop from Titanium (75+ nights if earned the regular way) to Silver (is that 10 nights?) or nothing. Titanium to not quite having enough nights for Plat would be more the sort of cases I would expect.