Respectfully, I disagree. As an LTD, my perception is that it's been re-tiered to pointlessness. My travels are almost exclusively to Asian and European properties. The lounges and breakfasts are far and away more valuable to me than slightly more square footage in the form of an upgrade. Ironically, I just booked what will now be my last ever stay in a Hilton property; the Conrad Osaka. And now it seems as though that will be a far less enjoyable experience since I will be excluded from the good lounge and relegated to the ever-increasing pile of people who garnered their status from credit cards. In my forty plus years of travel, I have only fired one brand - American Airlines lost me in 1985 and I have never flown another segment with them and consequently avoided the entire OneWorld alliance. Hilton has just become the second member of the list. Hilton is betting that the previous generation of loyalists won't abandon them. They're wrong. Once the swipe fee settlement decimates the ranks of status holders via premium credit cards, they're going to find it very expensive to win back all of the actual frequent travelers they have lost.