Tim O'Brien

Mr Chan,

you need to go beyond Guest Relations and Rewards Club, and email management a very straightforward factual chronology, stating the date you were offered, and accepted the 5K challenge, and your spend, satisfying the criterion.

if you haven't the relevant email addresses, ping me, and i'll forward to you.

Tim O'Brien

what will it take to re qualify for RA this year?

USD5K ?

or will all existing RA's be re qualified automatically?

Tim O'Brien

yes he is still with IHG, i received correspondence from him in late Dec.

nufnuf77

Having requalified with Haytt 60 nights and done my marriott 30 so far this year, I am thinking of moving to an IC for a month or two now. The question is what will it take to get the RA this year/asap? My usual destinations are BKK, SIN, HAN but right now no travel outside the country so just wanna stay in nice hotel and rest.

helvetic

Well you didn't say what country you were in.

I got kicked out of my IC here after the gov't took it over as a quarantine hotel so I'm back to Marriott. No RA for me I guess.

Tim O'Brien

nwill be interesting, i think in fairness, they should just renew all 2020 RA's. The year has been effectively written off.

in terms of qualifying, i think half the usual hurdle may be reasonable, say USD5K.

for most people, travel plans this year are being impacted by this external shock, totally out of our control.

and will continue, even after lockdown, for many.

let's hope IHG shows some Heart, like so many other corporate citizens.

stimpy

I don't think it should be a blanket requal. They should just do the top 1% as the program suggests. If the top 1% means $5K, then it is $5K. Or if the calculations come to $7K then it is $7K. Giving away RA to people who don't earn it cheapens the program. But rewarding people who are loyal even in difficult times really means something.

Pseudo Nim

I actually think this is exactly what they would do, but entirely for the wrong reasons. If I am loyal to the brand, but I am grounded because my country has shut its borders, despite wanting to spend money at IC, I am simply unable to - it's not a question of "not wanting to". Someone else may be travelling domestically and may have the ability to spend 1/10th what I would normally spend, but that's just because there's a forced rebalancing that is entirely outside of my control. What is under my control is where I spend my money after this madness ends - and if they simply fire me because not making an arbitrary target made for "normal" times, then in the end, it will be their loss.

Airlines are normally the strictest when it comes to requalification (American refused to renew my EXP when I was 40 miles away from 100K, and I had to find a bs flight to nowhere just to make it), but even all airlines have caved in and written off 2020.

stimpy

But if the requal is set at $5K or $7K, why would it be hard for you to re-qual? You had the first 10 weeks of the year before you were locked down, unless you were in Wuhan, right? And you will likely have several more months in 2020 to wrap it up. I did over $5K by early March and I fully expect to double that before the end of the year. I'm not traveling now and won't need to spend anything between mid-March and September. Or October even.

Pseudo Nim

Well, I'm actually at $5K so far exactly because of the first 10 weeks, lol. But what if someone's travel is more seasonal? Imagine your company's fiscal year is let's say Aug 1 or Sep 1. Your travel will likely not be around Jan, because end of calendar year slowdown has affected your beginning of the year meetings (cyclical). Feb/Mar/Apr/May/June got shot because of coronavirus. No travel will happen in Jul/Aug because work basically stops in summer, and your main travel will be late Sep/Oct/Nov (ie, by the time budgets are approved, etc, and this, assuming your meetings and tradeshows are still happening in Sep/Oct - Microsoft, for example, has moved ALL their conferences to virtual until 2021).

So it's not as simple as saying "there's still lots of time in the year left" - aside from folks who spend $10K of their own money, I will venture a guess that many RAs are corporate travellers, and those will be heavily affected for the entirety of the year, imho. Whether they are worth retaining as customers or not is a question that IHG would need to answer, and I would be quite surprised if one were to argue that they aren't, just because their travel budgets for the year have disappeared.

scubaccr

Or those curent non-RA's with multiple IC's traveling in-country, eg USA, China will be able to rack up IC nights / IC $$ Spend, and qualify on a possible pittance, whereas an existin UK RA eg a Londoner who can not travel travel to USA, Asia , Europe can not spend anything at IC's doesn't requalify

I am sure IHG Salt Lake will be quite aware that if an existing high spending multi-year RA loses RA through covid, they may well (probably) not book IC's without the status, and once gone won't be back. IHG will need to recognise us multiyear RAs and keep us somehow or risk losing us forever.

Pseudo Nim

Once again - would agree for any normal, sane loyalty program, but tell that to all the multi year RAs upthread who didn’t get renewed this year for reasons unknown

boekel

I'm RA since 2008 and I concur with Pseudo Nim. I believe that travel won't rebounce this year anymore to py levels In case they won't renew me I believe I won't chase any IHG status any more but would stick to Marriott which is IMO a crappy program, but even they extended the status to next year. Eventually move my IC stays to Hyatt. Loyalty isn't a one way street.

336

Maybe they are aware. A sure thing is their actions over the past years have shown they couldn't care less.

They do not consider it a risk "to loose us". In their world they can easily replace us with other customers, preferably from China.

stargold

They would be crazy to let any existing RAs go in the current environment, IMO.

2020 is a write-off for travel, and some companies are taking longer to accept this than others. I would be shocked if any hotel chain insists on people qualifying by the end of the year.