My Aurelian status got renewed.
Your question if it does make any difference… imho it does in about half of the hotels and they really treat you as a VIP which is kind of cool in most of the cases. I have booked standard rooms this year and was upgraded to top suites categories, just because of the status for example. In about 25% of the hotels they have no clue whatsoever what Aurelian status is and you don’t even get the standard benefits untill you ask explain and show them. In the last 25%you get the standard benefits. At the same time you get 1000$ credit with sixt which was almost 3% of what I spend which is pretty high.
If it’s worth it really depends upon you. I think that you’ll need to spend about double of what you did this year. If you are planning to spend it anyhow on LHW hotels you can just as well book them over LHW and try to get the status instead of Fhr or virtuoso as my experience is that LHW very often has lower rates.
In any case. I’m happy with another year