Originally Posted by
escape4
Suite upgrades, lounge access, and breakfast; those the are key elite benefits. GHA scores 0 / 3. Well as you mentioned some hotels now provide breakfast, but how many? Something like 5% of GHA hotels? And some of them were already including breakfast to all guests before, so in real life nothing has changed for a subset of that 5%. Nonetheless I will give GHA 0.05 / 3 rather than 0 / 3.
Regarding +2 upgrades, I have seen too many hotels where the value of the upgrade falls way short of the big hotel chains which often give suite upgrades, not +2. Another problem is if a hotel breaks down its room categories into 10+ buckets, then +2 is often immaterial. I give a greater weight to my real life experience than what's written in the terms & conditions, and bottom line, GHA upgrades are the weakest of Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG, and Accor. But also the easiest to reach a tier such as Titanium, so this should not be considered a "complaint".
I said this before: I would stay at GHA more if it was harder to achieve higher levels and if the benefits were better. I guess Red could be just that, minus the lounge access. But with an unclear target and lack of status challenge or status match, then I won't gamble.
I completed 7 brands for the promo. Thankfully, no major hiccups with posting. Two stays were incorrect, but fixed quickly, and the exchange rate conversion was fair, with base, elite, and promo D$ showing up immediately. I'm surprised the allotted D$ 1M hasn't run out, but maybe not many people are interested in GHA. Certainly didn't see a lot of advertizing in hotels, so maybe people just aren't aware of the promo.
GHA has no chance of becoming my top program, even if they gave me Red for hitting 10 (or whatever) brands. Like lost_in_translation I stayed at Anantara and Tivoli Algarve, and it was a sad joke. Divani in Athens, OMG. Mediocre hotels, no benefits. Avani and NH were poor, basically like old Holiday Inns. Nobody knows or cares about status. Grand Hotel Heiligendamm was the only reasonably memorable one (D$ bonus posted fine, even though strangely it's not part of any brand). I suspect some of the Capellas are better, and places like Lutetia or Cafe Royal look spectacular, but really, GHA is an odd program with its poor benefits and mish-mash of 80% bad-mediocre hotels, 15% decent ones, and 5% top notch. I'm gonna do three more brands in the next couple weeks to make sure I get my stays in before the D$ 1M runs out -- specifically at some better hotels like Murray HK, Capella SG, and maybe Pan Pacific SG (which allegedly grants club access to elites, how amazingly generous). I doubt I'm gonna go much further than 10 brands, because even though I believe that the D$ 200k is in reach, I have no interest in spending time at the various garbage brands like Parkroyal, Marco Polo, etc.