In explaining the no-notice elimination of air and hotel travel packages they say they cannot support category-based stay certificates once they eliminate award categories in March – so these packages go away, and any unused certificates can only be cancelled and converted back to points.
For members who have a current Travel Package certificate attached to a reservation, they can rest assured their package will be honored, and no additional action is required. However, if they need to make any modifications after March 2, 2022, they will need to contact Member Support and an associate will refund the total hotel portion in points.*
Members who have purchased a Travel Package but have not yet attached their Travel Package Certificate to a reservation, must contact Member Support by February 28, 2022. for assistance in attaching their certificate. If a member does not attach their Travel Package Certificate to a reservation by that date, the certificate will be cancelled, and the total hotel portion will be refunded to your account as points.
Marriott could continue to honor these certificates if they wished to do so..
- They could be honored based on the peak point value of the category for which they were redeemed, just like they’re valid for today. It’s just a matter of treating each category certificate as a point value according to the existing award chart. And they’re already set up for stay certificates valid up to a certain number of points, since these are awarded with their co-brand credit cards.
- They could be honored based on current hotel category assignments. Each certificate has a category maximum, and each current hotel has a category.
So the real reason is that Marriott chooses not to do work to preserve member value while devaluing its points for its own balance sheet purposes.
Update: the best thing you can do is let those travel packages expire it would seem, or at least you’ll have gotten a lot of airline miles at extremely low cost, based on how Marriott is refunding points for these.
- If you bought a category 1-4 certificate and 110K miles for 330K Marriott points you will get a refund of 210K Marriott points after 2/28 if you don’t use your hotel certificate.
- If you bought a category 5 certificate and 110K miles for 390K Marriott points you will get a refund of 280K Marriott points after 2/28 if you don’t use your hotel certificate.
- If you bought a category 6 certificate and 110K miles for 510K Marriott points you will get a refund of 420K Marriott points after 2/28 if you don’t use your hotel certificate.
- If you bought a category 7 certificate and 110K miles for 570K Marriott points you will get a refund of 490K Marriott points after 2/28 if you don’t use your hotel certificate.
- If you bought a category 8 certificate and 110K miles for 750K Marriott points you will get a refund of 700K Marriott points after 2/28 if you don’t use your hotel certificate.
In other words you would normally need to use 240K Marriott for 110K miles, but if you bought a category 8 package, you will have only used 50K Marriott points after the refund. Score!
At what point does a publicly traded company get held responsible for lying? One has to wonder if Marriott’s investor relations staff lies to investors in the same fashion as Marriott’s PR people and Bonvoy customer service lie to customers. It’s amazing that more industry analysts don’t raise these things on earning calls or shareholders at annual meetings. How can anyone trust Marriott?
There comes a point where is the marginal value of Marriott point is so low that it no longer pays to earn them.
Most folks would be much better off either booking their credit card travel portal and earning 3-10X points for the spend, or just booking through HotelSlash (use Early Access Code VFTW) and pocketing the extra cash.
@ Gary — Wow, this is slimy even for Marriott. They should be sued for this lie.
So what happens to the current credit card certificates for free nights that are category based. I could have missed it, but did they change the T&Cs of the credit cards to reflect a change?
What exactly does “refund the total hotel portion in points” mean?
Is a 7 night cat 5 cert refunded as 7×35 (standard)? 7×40 (peak)? Or 6×35/40 (accounting for 5th night free)? Or something less than all of these, because Bonvoy?
I have a 7 day category 6 certificate still unattached. Any idea of how many points I will get for it?
More details at the TPG, but who know if it is accurate …
https://thepointsguy.com/news/marriott-end-travel-packages/
“Wolf told TPG that members who do not redeem the seven-night hotel stay part of the package by this date will have their package canceled, and the total hotel part will be refunded in points based on peak pricing. So if you redeemed 570,000 points for a Category 7 stay and 100,000 airline miles, you would be refunded 490,000 points.”
It feels like there might be some “opportunity” here, assuming the hotel nights will be credited back at max value?
I have 3 7-night packages – valid until end June 2022. They cannot just change that now to Feb 28 without significant compensation. I would be willing to accept the standard value of 7 nights at that category (minus 1 for 5th night).
Bonvoyed again!
Anyone who regularly follows travel blogs knows of the hotel loyalty programs’ and the property owners’ pattern of conduct. Why is this a surprise? Anyone who regularly follows travel blogs knows that the hotel loyalty programs are a mug’s game. So, if someone is upset at this or any of the other benefit cuts, one must still be playing the hotel loyalty program game . . . and is a mug . . . and deserves all this garbage. Find another path and move on.
Marriott was once a leader in the hospitality industry . But the company has gotten away from being a hospitality company . The paradigm has changed . Marriott is now seemingly a franchisor with a valuable guest engagement / loyalty/ marketing database that is the carrot offered to franchisees. The “benefits” offered in the loyalty program are strictly a tool to get folks to engage via their portal to the hotels . Ever wonder why Marriott doesn’t volunteer hotel email addresses ? They want to direct all activity through their portal and database . Never underestimate the power and value of an extensive and vast customer marketing database .
Why not just stay at cheaper hotels and just earn credit card points. Know this does not apply everywhere. But why pay double or triple in cities like Bangkok for brand name hotels ? Plus the points are always off anyways….. “in their favour”. Thinking you won’t notice.
Based on the update and the refund amount, isn’t this the best case scenario? We get a full point refund and now have significantly more flexibility since we won’t need to find 7 consecutive days of award availability.
@John — yeah, if they do it the way they say it’s not that awful unless you had your eye on a hotel where you thought you could get outsized value using the cert based on the hotel’s category. Now, you’re stuck with points that will apparently have closer to a fixed value once we see the changes they are making in March. (Narrator: it’s going to suck.)
I’m not a Marriott person, so only can talk about the perception … it seems to me that Marriott, a once proud and very successful hotelier, is now being run by Martians. Every time I turn around Marriott is doing something to annoy their loyal customers. I first noticed it when the merger with Starwood seemingly turned out negative articles daily. Marriott should put someone in charge of Bonvoy who has a few customer service perceptions and the skills to implement what Marriott loyalists might want.
@Larr – Agreed that it’ll suck. But I read somewhere that almost all hotels will remain in the same point range for 2022 and then the real deval will hit in 2023. So we should be able to redeem the points we get in exchange for the certs for at least the same value that the certs were (and in some cases more because we’re getting peak valuation as a refund), and we have more flexibility since we don’t need to use them just on 7-night stays.
Now, it does sound like there will be a few dozen hotels that do go up in points cost this year, so if someone is targeting one of those then that’ll hurt. And I fully agree that Marriott points will not be worth more in 2023 than they are right now.
I am very happy that I’ll be getting 700k points back from my 2 certs and can now use those points on long weekends or 5-night stays and not have to find 7 nights of availability. But you can bet I’ll try to drain my Marriott account this year.
Slimy again but in this case I’m coming our way ahead by getting 490K points for my 7 night Cat 7 expiring in June. I don’t have any big travel plans anyways due to Covid travel nonsense. I’d much rather transfer that 490K to airline miles at this point.
I noticed Gonzo asked but i didn’t see an answer, so I’ll ask also:
What happens to the free Cat5 hotel certificates that we get annually with the Marriott credit cards? One of my cards gives a 1-night Cat5 cert, usable for hotels costing <= 25k points. The other card gives a 1-night Cat5 cert, usable for hotels costing <= 35k points.
I have 2 unused certificates right now… do I need to obligate them before March? Or is this expiration only relevant for purchased packages?
Do you know if the same chart applies for people that purchased the old packages before bonvoy switched up their tier levels? I have a cat 1-4 that was originally a cat 1-5, kept getting it extended and then covid hit so it expires June 2022 now so should I be getting back 210K points?
I just called Marriott and they said for the old packages that converted you will only get 45k in points.
I called and got same answer for getting backing only 45k in points. I don’t understand that, it is in the FAQ – https://help.marriott.com/s/article/Article-22136, the refund will be based on the current Points redemption category levels and will equal the sum of the Peak Points Redemption Rate per each Night of the Travel Package Award, at the highest category for which the Award was eligible. Why there are exceptions? What I can do?
Just checked my account and still have my category 6 certificate in tact. The 45k refund has me worried
for my 7-night cat 5 cert, it’s still under the “free night certificates”, showing “partial TRVL-Package 7 nts up to 280000 pts.(expires Jun 30,2022).
I was expecting on Mar 1 the points would be refunded in to my point account, which the points won’t be expired and I can book any hotel night online. But now it seems it’s still a “certificate” but has a point value and expiring in 4 months…and for booking, I’ll have to call an agent to attach this certificate…？
Anyone has ideas? is this the way how Marriott ‘refund’ the points?
I’m in the same boat Steph. I called and they told me that they will transfer points after March 28. Right after they probably devalue everyone points. I’m not sure if I should go ahead and book or take my chances by devaluation looks to be coming for sure. IMHO