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Ok. Who was your character? I'll do a search again this time looking for any and all communication directed at you by Romeo and Juliet. I'm perfectly confident of the same result, of course.
And the last time Achaea offered rewards was when it was perfectly legal to do so: around January of 2003, almost a year and a half ago.
Bonus cards/loyalty programs are offered for two main reasons: One is customer retention, the other is to gather information on the customer. Here's a in the NY Times about hotels doing exactly what I wrote. In case you don't want to read the entire article, here's a quote:
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"Why are hotels putting the squeeze on business travelers? It is not just to load them up with incentives to come back. A new dynamic is at work: a rush to accumulate as much information as possible about as many guests as possible, as quickly as possible. The big chains, realizing that such information is crucial in a booming economy to keeping the customers they have and enticing new ones, are discovering that their databases are woefully inadequate.
''They're desperate for data,'' said Robert Mandelbaum, a hotel analyst with PKF Consulting in Atlanta. ''Hotels need information about their guests and especially about business travelers and getting them to sign up for their loyalty programs is the easiest way to get that information.''
Registering for Wyndham's frequent-stayer program, for instance, means telling the hotel chain your preferred bed type, whether you like to relax with a Coke or a Chardonnay after you check in and which airline loyalty program you belong to. Guests also submit their addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses -- and the online sign-up form automatically registers them to receive a monthly e-mail newsletter called ''Wyndham News ByRequest,'' which features ''member-only offers, program updates and information.''
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--matt
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