Marriott’s been making lots of changes ever since the programs merged back in August. Unfortunately they aren’t done making changes yet. It’s getting really hard and confusing to keep up with everything. From the articles we have been able to cover in the past 6 months they have had premium properties leave, refused to honor reservations at a property that left, and changed categories on rooms on a handful of properties already.
Coming soon to a Marriott Property Near You
Marriott’s latest approach to loyalty is to punish members for joining with a long list of confusing terms and conditions rather than actually reward members. From what I can tell there’s still a lot more negative coming and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.
Lets start with the irrelevant
Marriott Bonvoy officially launches February 13, 2019. Bonvoy is just another way for them to rebrand their merged program. Platinum Premier will become Titanium, and Platinum Premier with Ambassador gets rebranded as Ambassador.
The Negative
- 380 hotels are changing category ~5% of the overall portfolio
- 340 hotels are going up in category
- 40 hotels are going down in category
- Category 8 is coming on March 5.
The Positive
- Peak and Off Peak awards start at a later date in 2019, but they are eventually coming
- UPDATE: Marriott is now planning on honoring the current rates on points advance reservations after properties change category, so book your points advance reservation now
Marriott’s Talking Points
- Of all participating hotels, 1 percent are decreasing, and 4 percent are increasing in point cost with 95 percent remaining unchanged.
- Fewer hotels are moving up this year than in the past – over the past 5 years between 10 – 15 percent of the portfolio went up a category.
- Ninety-one percent of all hotels require between 7,500 – 35,000 points per night.
- Members can save up to 25K points per night by redeeming points for one of the 62 luxury properties in Category 7 that are slated to move to Category 8 on March 5.
My take
Marriott suddenly changing the rules is nothing new. It’s shady, it sucks and they need to learn there are consequences to destroying loyalty. It shouldn’t take a law degree to understand loyalty and program terms and conditions. This whole situation is similar to how Marriott stripped away promised reservation at Le Meridien Tahiti and have left their customers with absolutely no resolution, short of a refund. I know that many of you will probably disagree with this sentiment, but where is the government oversight like we have with contract of carriage on airline tickets. It’s time to regulate the nefarious behavior of hotels.
So will Marriott honor an advance points reservation made in April for a stay in January 2020. Booked it for 5 nights for 140,000 points and now Marriott is telling us the new rate is 240,000 for 5 nights. The points were in our account but they had not pulled them out of our account yet. Do you think they will honor old reservation point amount?
If you have secured the booking with the old rate, they should deduct your miles already? Either way if you have some proofs I think they should honor it.
Marriott and Bonvoy are dead in my book. I did an award booking in Zurich during Janurary 2019. The hotel in question and peak and off peak rates but Marriot does not publish when off peak occurs. I was in touch with Marriot to clarify but their answer was useless. Checking the website I noticed that the points rate was the same for every night of a 12 month period.
In my opinion, off peak rates are a LIE.
Well, at least I got to 5 day reservations at St. Regis Bora Bora at 48,000 per night and was upgraded to overwater bungalow for free. Go Marriott !!
Overall,I don’t see any improvement. Spending a small fortune on program rebranding that has no real meaning. Conversion of benefits similar to Delta’s Choice benefits. Unfortunately, it apprears they are equally hard to use and of very limited real benefit. Suite awards can’t be used at most of the places I have reservations. No guarantees on booking, just a maybe starting five days out. Looks like a good way to keep from doing suite upgrades.
50K to 80K points per night for a room? Count me out, I’ll use the points for a better value.
3000 nights and still I only see a suite occasionally and then at properties here I’ve stayed regularly.
Rant stops here. D
Your main negative point has already been proven false by VFTW and TPG direct information from Marriott.
“Marriott suddenly isn’t planning on honoring the current rates on points advance reservations after properties change category.
Marriott had previously promised that with just a phone call to the call center members who had points advance reservations on hold would be allowed to redeem under the old hotel category as long as they had the points 14 days before arrival”
This is just not true and several of the blogs have already corrected their statements about it. Sad you’re late to the game and still haven’t avoided the misunderstanding.
Post was updated with the information. I apologize we are behind but it was a scheduled post written over 36 hours ago