mahasamatman

Drat, I've already lost out. My two stays this year were at different brands. But then again, I don't think I have to worry about hitting Platinum either.

TerryK

Looks like you are surprised.

jb3t

I stayed at all 9 brands last year and I have to tell you, it's not easy to do.

CPRich

Once again showing the challenges of being in a marketing department. Do something special once and you get smacked if you don't do the same (or, often, better) perpetually.

geminidreams

I hope they have an Element planned for Bangkok and then I could do the 9 in 9 nights.

mahasamatman

I think they're working on a bonus for staying in all 1,175 Starwood hotels in one year.

Dr. HFH

^^^

RAPC

Completely agree. Damned if they do, damned if they don't sometimes.

AJLondon

Marketing 101. It's all about perception. And I think the SPG Marketing team has been very clever in this regard. They deliberately never came out and said this was a one-off, or that it would not be repeated (or conversely that it would be repeated).

Their careful response was a great marketing ploy. A very coy - it's a surprise / don't know about future etc etc. The reason for this was to implictly encourage guests to try to achieve the metric of stays all 9 brands without any guarantee of any award this year.

SPG marketing can of course now have their cake and eat it too - by not repeating the incentive or some form of it. However, it may certainly influence future buyer behavior. And they clearly don't need me to suggest that they consult some marketing text which may help quantify the tradeoffs between long term customer trust and retention versus one-off gains.



P.S. And in the interests of full disclosure, I did happen to stay at all 9 brands last year, so feel free to discount whatever bias you think I may have!

merrickdb

My guess is that it was something far less nefarious: I think it was just a quirky "thank you" to the small group of SPG members who happened to stay in all nine brands that year. It wasn't meant as an on-going promotion or part of the program, and to the degree recipients told others about this nice surprise, I suspect SPG expected others to view it just as SPG doing something nice, not like something they too should expect. It's kind of like hearing someone found chocolates or a birthday cake or flowers in their room and thinking you're entitled to it too. I had a long conversation about the Philippines with the Filipino pastry chef at the Westin Seattle last year and he sent some elaborate chocolates he made, including a replica of the Space Needle, to my room. That similarly didn't mean Flyertalkers should seek him out and spend time talking about the Philippines because they expect doing so will yield chocolates.

(On the staying at all SPG properties thought, it's something I've been tempted to try over a lifetime, but it would clearly be quite difficult, particularly with the many properties under construction. I haven't updated my list of different SPG properties I've stayed at recently, but it is over a hundred.)

SC Alum

Anybody receive the same gift for 2013 stay?

Songer5

Just confirming that nothing came from SPG in the past few months. I'm unintentionally at 8 brands YTD and thought I'd hit Le Meridien just for the heck of it, but would be more inclined if there were a prize for it.

qasr

There was nothing (so far) for doing so in 2013, so I wouldn't be expecting one in 2014... but who knows?

anchor79

last year I got a nice gift as Ambassador Guest for my Birthday.. This year, nada, not even a greeting from my ambassador.

fryguy89

Well, I just completed staying at all 9 brands again this year (hit for the cycle again). Don't know if there will be any special surprise or not but I do like the fun/challenge of trying to accomplish it each year.

We will see.