Personally, I really hate when companies try to spin devaluations as a positive change.

NUAs clearing 3 days out make them effectively useless for Titanium and above, as they will only clear if the hotel has tons of upgrade inventory, in which case a complimentary upgrade at check-in is highly likely anyways (perhaps Plats or people who only stay in the US and therefore see few upgrades may value them more). In my opinion, upgrade instruments are only valuable for providing certainty in advance, so you can try to ensure your most important stays are the ones to land an upgrade. Taking away this certainty leaves the instruments fairly worthless.

Of course, at the current trajectory, I recognize Marriott's higher ups would read such feedback and decide "clearly we just need to reduce complimentary upgrades then, maybe even make a higher spending-based tier that exclusively gets complimentary upgrades going forward, thereby making NUAs sound like a good deal to everyone else".

In short, Hyatt's instant-upgrades-at-time-of-booking are looking oh so enticing.

Anyways, have a good weekend everyone.