Tag Archives for marriott bonvoy.
Rewards Network has seemed to me mostly in the business of lending money to trouble restaurants and exorbitant rates. Expect to find troubled spots in the program, places that aren’t attractive business on their own. From what I’ve heard volume in these programs is lower than you’d expect. Still, more points is better than fewer points and more programs in which to earn points is a positive development too.
Marriott tells me though that “it may take a few hours to fully update our servers” so there may still be hotels not yet showing peak pricing. And it’s still possible to book awards at those properties as they roll out the changes. I’m not saying to go look for a needle in a haystack, but some glitches and delays in raising prices may be out there.
Twitter used to be the “go-to” way of getting personalized customer service, and with some brands it still is. Many companies assign super competent agents to deal with twitter, and empower them to cut through bureaucracy to solve problems.
Not all do however. And some just follow the ‘first rule of social media’ which is to try to get customers to stop blasting the company as quickly as possible. The easiest way to do that is to get the customer to ‘take it to DM’.
When Marriott first announced their new program they told us they’d be adding a new highest redemption category 8 and also adding peak and off peak pricing for 2019. They put off category 8 until March but postponed peak and off peak pricing even further.
They’ve been silent on when to expect it until now, giving us a month’s notice before the new top redemption price could go as high as 100,000 points per night. Effective September 14th they’re making some other changes to the program as well.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
