That may be the case in the US (which is why hotels over there don't give a damn about status anymore), but in most of the world you still have most people qualifying through BIB perhaps with some ocassional promo. And the changes Hilton is making next year suggest that Hilton does care about these customers and wants to make them more satisfied. Unfortunatelly they're doing it in a way which throws some of us overboard. Diamond Reserve, let alone Honors Society don't bother me that much, but devaluation of Diamond does because as you said, upgrades were already hard to come by and judging by the way Hilton worded lounge benefit for DR, I'm worried that lounges will also be quietly enhanced away for regular Diamonds.

I will not stop staying at Hilton, I really like some of their properties, but I will definitely stay less than I did before - this is already happening, I have my travel more or less booked up until March and I was quite conscious about choosing IHG unless I had a very good reason to stay at Hilton (favourite property, good price). I was also consdering building status in a third program, but none of them seems to work well for me, so I'm trying out some independent properties instead. There's currently a promo where Booking.com gives 10 points per euro when using RevPay, so I booked around a dozen nights that way at independent hotels, and if it turns out to work for me in terms of quality of hotels etc, I may give up on loyalty altogether. I'm gonna finish 2025 with 95 nights in Hilton Honors, so that's per 23.75 per quarter. For Q1 2026 I'm at 15 nights, and looking at my calendar (as well as budget), I don't see myself adding many more trips where Hilton could potentially get some of my business. On the other hand, I only had 74 nights at IHG, so 18.5 per quarter (and even that wasn't entirely BIB, there were some double elite credit promos), but for Q1 2026 I booked 30 nights with them already.

Another issue for Hilton is that even when I opt to stay at their hotels, I may be less incentivised to always book direct. Once I'm at 50 nights, there's no value in additional qualifying nights (since I can't qualify for anything more without insane spend, and there's no rollover making qualification easier the next year), points are usually less valuable than what Revolut Stays offer me, member rate isn't actually cheaper half of the time, so the only incentive to stay is benefits but those are only really substantial at higher end properties.