Perhaps you're a businessman in and out of airports, hotels and motels like a revolving door. Or a travel enthusiast who starts planning the next trip on the way home from the current one.

It's very likely your billfold or purse cardholder has an inch-thick collection of frequent-stay and frequent-flier memberships for a Who's Who of hotel chains, airlines, car rentals . . . you name it. Any place that offers some sort of bonus for being a loyal repeat customer.

How do you personally feel about them? Has it been a rewarding relationship? Or has it proved to be heavy on promotional hype but disappointing where performance is concerned, especially now in an era of cutbacks and penny-pinching?

Leafing through the thick stack carried in my card holder is like reviewing a New York Stock Exchange listing of the travel industry's headliners.

In the hotel category there's Marriott, Starwood (Sheraton, Westin, W, The Luxury Collection), Six Continents (Inter-Continental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Staybridge), Radisson, Hyatt, Hilton and Best Western Gold Crown, for starters.

Airline cards include American, United, Delta, Northwest, Continental, Lufthansa, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, plus some lesser known ones stored in a drawer hauled out only when returning to the remote area they serve.

They all used to mean something . . . a few still do. But rumblings from the travelling public this journalist encounters have been increasingly negative.

There seems to be an epidemic of travellers whose hotel stays are not credited to their accounts, even though membership cards are presented at check-in. Even when the check-out receipt shows a membership number, they often seem to mysteriously evaporate into thin air.

"I've given up on all of them," complained one frequent traveller we met at the counter of a chic boutique hotel with no such programme. "These places are more interesting and seem to have better customer relations."

The newest trend is arbitrary cancellation. If you consistently stay at a particular brand for years, but then miss just one year, everything is wiped out without notice.

Has it happened to you? Is it a trend of a slowing economy wherever cent seems to matter and amenity cutbacks getting more obvious?

After hearing growing complaints, a few personal experiences helped emphasise the problem.

A couple of cases in point: After taking three long-haul train trips on Amtrak in 2006, we awaited the statement containing an abundance of accumulated points.

Round trips to Albuquerque, New Mexico; Whitefish, Montana; and Grand Junction, Colorado all involved bedroom accommodations and each train trip ranged somewhere between $2,400 and $2,800.

According to its plan, award points would have been quite substantial. In each case, our newly-acquired numbers were given at time of reservations and ticketing . . . but when year-end statements arrived, mine showed zero and my brother Jim had only 500 points for a four-wheel-drive vehicle rented in his name in Montana.

A call to them showed a remarkably indifferent attitude.

"Someone issued numbers that weren't transmitted properly on your card." Pardon me? No apology, but a curt, impolite attitude not unlike that endured from a number of staff encountered on its trains.

Yes, rail travel is fabulous, a magical, nostalgic way to see the country and we're fascinated by it. But one does encounter a disappointing number of staff once onboard that could do with civility training.

If I was willing to go back over the year and dredge out all boarding passes, something might be done to rectify the situation. But the implication was it was my fault, not theirs for sending us wrong numbered cards.

By that time I'd been on a whirlwind of travel in all directions and in the deadline driven world of journalism, one gets an Oscar Wilde attitude. He was right when he proclaimed "I do not suffer fools gladly."

So I dropped it. The same was true of Best Western. After multiple stays at its properties in Grants, New Mexico and Whitefish, Montana, practically no stays made it on statements ¿ despite the fact in each case it was entered on arrival and double-checked on departure.

"I've shredded most of my hotel cards," lamented a distressed newspaper columnist friend. "They used to mean something, but they've gone way off track. So many of them have a totally indifferent attitude.

"People staffing those membership phone reservation services often simply don't care. I don't know if it's lack of training or what," complained the columnist whose byline is nationally recognised. "I've started staying at unusual hotels, not chain properties. They seem more personalised."

Jim's recent experience with Hilton is certainly an example of a system that has lost its efficiency.

His gold card account has some 51,000 miles . . . actually we both have Hilton membership cards and frequently stay at Embassy Suites, Hampton Inns, Hiltons, Conrads and so on.

But over the years our stays tend to come in spurts. We'll maybe be somewhere and spend several days to a week at one of them . . . from the Anchorage Hilton to Dublin's Conrad or Tucson and Denver's Embassy Suites, or the Hampton Inn on the Navajo Nation at Keyenta, Arizona.

And readers may remember we've often written about some that we have considered special.

A notice arrived earlier this year that since Jim hadn't stayed at any Hilton property last year, he would lose those 51,000 points if he didn't check into one of its properties almost immediately.

It so happens last year we were writing about wonderful lakeside lodges, French chateaux, etc. where no Hilton properties exist.

But we did stay at one especially outstanding Embassy Suite at Burlingame, California just outside San Francisco on May 11, 2007, actually for the second time.

We loved it and wrote about its unique bayside qualities just before sailing off on Seven Seas Mariner from San Francisco to Alaska.

"Yes, I see it here on his record," admitted Hilton Gold Card Agent 61936. "I don't know why this is happening."

We paid $174.90 for one of the top-floor concierge rooms reserved for members. We had even called in advance directly to the hotel to reserve a special location and asked the manager on duty if he could have some information available, possibly even a photo.

I'd read that considerable money had been spent enhancing it since our first visit coming in from the Gold Country a few years earlier. This was the site where Embassy Suites idea actually originated and impressively landscaped gardens covered many acres along the shoreline.

On arrival when asking that on-duty manager questions about this very exceptional oceanside property, it didn't take long to realise he was not an enthusiastic employee enamoured with his job and anxious to rise up the promotional ladder.

"There's obviously been some mistake here," said Agent 61936 on March 15. "I'll check and get back to you. My extension is 1936."

One does not hold one's breath waiting for responses in matters like this or one would certainly turn blue during the interim.

By April 19 it seemed time to follow up. No one seemed to know about Agent 61936, who incidentally had seemed very pleasant and personable.

After repeating that stay date and location half a dozen times to a woman named Glynis, one soon realised they were sending, but no one was receiving. "I can give you a case file number to pursue." HELP!

Busy preparing to leave on a short trip the next day, Jim was standing there insisting I hang up and stop wasting my time on incompetents.

"There's an easy way to solve this," he said and headed for our shredder to insert his Gold Hilton card. Home again five days later, a silver Hilton card addressed to him arrived in the mail. How can you deal with a company where the right hand doesn't know what the left one is doing. And as often as we've requested the offered snail-mail statements, they're always promised but never received.

You realise, of course, that those points don't just drop into your account from the sky . . . participating properties have to buy them. And in some cases car rental companies are charging extra when you request them.

Perhaps some travellers have more time to pursue their points, but is it really worth the effort when you have to spend a lot of valuable time arguing about them?

And did you know that when you claim those rewards with some hotel chains, the rooms will not be their top quality?

In the case of the Burlingame, California Embassy Suite, we wanted a view looking out over the water in a certain direction. When we considered using points to reserve it, we were told those rooms cost more and were saved only for paying guests.

So we chose to pay for it, rather than use points. Do you really want a room looking out over the air-conditioning condensers and garbage collection area? No thanks.

And yet, by way of contrast, when we arrived in Lisbon, Portugal and showed our Marriott Honoured Guest Card at the front desk of a property where we'd stayed years earlier when it was a Penta, we were treated like treasured guests . . . and we rarely have the opportunity to stay at a Marriott property, but certainly intend to in future.

Next week: History goes to the movies