I have been a gold member for years, and I have a lot of points accumulated. I then went to silver, and now classic. IMO there is no difference between the two bottom tiers.

I am tired of having to book 30 nights to retain gold, and I did get a "few" perks from being gold, but not always. As I have said in a past post regarding Ibis, Ibis Styles, once you have stayed in one, you will know that pretty much wherever you are those properties will look the same. There is no character whatsoever. I have stayed in a few Mercure and Novotel, and they were ok.

I have decided to move away from Accor. I am going back to booking hotels that have a flavor and a charm of their own, older hotels, in the countries I visit.

I have two trips coming up, one in Sep to mid-Oct and there are only two Accor hotels involved and I am using points to bring the total down. The reason, I don't want to loose the points if I don't use them. Then next year in Apr and May and other trip and Accor only enters the picture once in all the travel. Cost-wise, all the hotels I will be staying at for those two trips are the same just slightly more or less than Accor.

I find the charge for Accor breakfast has gone up and IMO it is unreasonably high, so I skip that altogether, as most of the hotels I will be staying a inculde it in their price. I shed no tears for leaving Accor and look forward to the excitement and enjoyment of staying in hotels that in most cases really have a warm welcome when you arrive and go out of their way to make your stay as enjoyable as possible. No longer do I need to worry as so many do in this forum about "Will I get a drink voucher" " will I get a small gift in my room or a welcome card" or "do I get lounge access". Those thing do make the holiday IMO, it is the rememberence of how kind, and helpful the staff is. So there you have it.