Marriott Rewards hotel category changes going into effect March 24. You can redeem hotels that are going up in price now for stays after March 24 and pay the current lower price.
- 560 hotels are going up a category (6% of those are outside the US)
- 237 hotels are going down a category (36% of those are outside the US)
They aren’t changing the structure of the program, or taking away benefits (such as they are). Rather it’s the time of year where they shift hotels from one redemption category to another. And consistently year after year Marriott moves more hotels to higher, more expensive redemption categories than to lower, less expensive categories.
That means it takes more points to redeem for free nights, points are worth less, and free night certificates that are capped at category 4 or 5 redemption are worth less too because there are fewer hotels at which they can be used.
Marriott makes the point that ‘only’ 18% of hotels are changing category, and that 6 in 10 hotels are category 4 or lower.
Consistently, year-after-year, though more hotels move to higher categories and so it takes more points to redeem for fre nights. Here’s what that’s looked like for the five years from 2011 through 2015.
- 2011: Marriott Rewards Increasing Points Requirements for Redemptions at 350 Hotels in a Week — They Just Won’t Tell You Which Ones
Marriott is making its own annual award category changes and the news isn’t nearly as good.
Marriott is raising the reward category for 350 hotels and lowering the category for 100 hotels on March 8.
Members can make reservations at the lower reward level for hotels moving up before March 8, but Marriott has only released the names of 50 hotel properties that are changing category — so in most cases members have no idea whether or not they need to do this.
..The real issue is no advance notice on 90% of the hotels that are going up in category.
- 2012: 100 hotels are going down a category and 526 are going up a category.
- 2013: Marriott Increasing the Price of Award Nights
Marriott announced both hotel category changes (almost all are going ‘up’ in price) and the introduction of a new, higher award category — category 9.
- The new category 9 will cost 45,000 points per night
- 36% of properties will go up by one or more categories (almost all by only 1)
- Only 1% of properties will drop by a category.
- The new category 9 will cost 45,000 points per night
- 2014: 1 in 5 Marriott Hotels Will Require More Points to Redeem a Free Night
- 2015: Marriott Rewards Whacks Members Again With Big Increase in Reward Prices
About a third of hotels are going up or down in price. The changes are skewed 3-1 in favor of increases. As a result, more than a quarter of all Marriott hotels will cost more points to redeem.
In 2013 an unhappy Marriott Rewards member even wrote a song about it (to the tune of Les Miserables “Master of the House”).
Now in 2016 Marriott is again moving substantially more hotels up in category than down in category. With Marriott buying Starwood that’s not the way to instill confidence in members.
I closed my Marriott credit card and stopped participating in their free nights promotions 2 or 3 years ago, because the only hotels in cat 5 or below are only good for mattress runs. Even Fairfield Inns have crept up to cat 6 & 7. These are motels that compete with Motel 6 or Days Inn for the trucker business. Unfortunately, with the absorption of SPG we will be left with two large chains, Marriott and Hilton, who have stripped away all value, or smaller chains like Hyatt who lag behind in the race to the bottom, but have too small of a footprint to be our main hotel chain.
Sam +1. I am weary of playing the “hurry and book your flight, hotel before the latest never-ending devaluation.” Fairfields at class 6/7….what a joke.
Maybe complete travel free-agency, along with a good cash back credit card is the answer.
The Marriott Rewards team is absolutely terrible. You should only have to do one large devaluation every 3-5 years. If not, your either a) incompetent, b) greedy, c) unwilling to tweak the program to keep points at current levels or d) all of the above.
Guess this explains the timing for offering an enormous signup bonus with the Chase card.
As loyal SPG member, this gives me even less hope. I was going to sign up for the Marriott card this week and have now changed my mind!
I recently got another Marriot card, but strictly for the 80K point sign up bonus. My only spend on it was the min required for those bonus points. I can’t imagine who actually puts any substantial spend on the card. It takes roughly the same $ spend for one night at the London Park Lane as it does for an AA Saver Business TATL flight. Seriously?
Even before this latest decimation, renewing the card had no appeal for me. My last renewal “free night” certificate a few years ago went unused, as there was no qualifying property I wanted to stay in, even for free. I rarely do aspirational stays, I mainly just look for decent places to sleep. This now puts some of those ‘I don’t care to stay there’ properties up in categories 7 or even 8.
Had to laugh though when I saw that the Cairo JW, which probably runs around 5% occupancy on a good night, is moving up a level.
We ALL should complain to CHASE Bank that their Marriott credit cards (personal, business) is worth lot less. Chase should have a say since they bought Marriott points at a certain value and that value is much less..