I think they are - we do quite a lot of leisure travelling typically 5 star hotels , F travel plus car hire. Under the old scheme we both easily qualified for GGL and would typically get 5000 - 6000 TP each year for a BA spend of £30-40K on mostly long haul flights in F. We did use the BA Holidays double tier points offer quite frequently over the last 2 years but never used the hotel element as it never makes financial sense from a room rate point of view or from a loss of benefits point of view. I have just price compared the option of going on one of our typical trips using BA for the flights only and paying for the hotel direct as we normally do (which would mean I get my hotel benefits as Lifetime Hyatt Globalist) versus putting the hotel and flights into a BA holiday. It is £5k more expensive for the BA holidays option plus I lose around $170 per day in Hotel benefits plus the lost points which have a value. It just does not make financial sense to use BA Holidays and I suspect this is the case for most premium leisure travellers.

Under the new spend based system of tier points and due to the large uplift in equivalent new tier points to reach GGL , I don't think either of us would reach GGL on our existing spend pattern. I think our spend would be enough for us both to reach Gold each year but as we are both Gold for Life anyway there is little point in going for Gold. I was within 20k Tier points shooting distance of GGLFL on the old scheme which would have been achievable in 3 or 4 years without much effort and say £40-50K expenditure with BA for my flights etc over those 3/4 years. Under the new scheme, to reach GGLFL would cost just under £200K plus as we invariably travel together another £200k for my wife. It is a non starter and alienated is perhaps a mild term for how we feel.