Tag Archives for marriott.
In the new Marriott program there will be two card issuers: Chase for personal cards, and American Express for premium personal and small business cards. All legacy cards will continue to be serviced.
And in the new program the transfer ratio of Membership Rewards to Starwood (and ultimately Marriott) will be changing as well.
Marriott increased points prices at a ton of hotels in March, only to lower their prices in August with the new program. This gave them a higher baseline from which to claim they’re lowering more redemption prices than they’re raising.
Even accounting for this, the number of hotels going up in price is roughly equal to the number going down in price. But comparing Marriott redemption prices in February to pricing in August is a more reasonable take than ‘reductions outnumber increases’.
Yesterday writing about Marriott’s new list of hotel redemption pricing that will go into effect in August I mentioned the new Marriott program starting August 1.
A Marriott spokesman e-mailed quickly to correct me to say we don’t know when the new award chart will start, because we don’t know when the new program starts. But that’s not what their website says.
Marriott is apparently cracking down on people booking hotels that haven’t yet opened — speculatively, hoping for compensation when the opening date inevitably delays — and in particular warning people trying to do this while using credit cards “that will not authorize the forfeiture amount.”
Rather than temporarily disabling customer accounts, Marriott needs to fix its IT and better manage construction projects.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Despite some information out there to the contrary — you can book award rooms now to lock in availability, and then get any points price difference for the same room back in late summer or fall if the points price of the hotel drops. And that’s true even if the hotel is sold out or is sold out of standard rooms.
Marriott offers ‘travel packages‘ where you redeem points for airline miles and a seven night hotel stay (there are also 5 night packages, intended for timeshare owners, these have become tougher to get if you aren’t a timeshare owner).
The value here is that you get transfers of points to miles at a rate that’s good enough you’re more or less getting a free hotel stay thrown in.
I’m seeing a ton of coverage of Marriott’s new award chart lauding the top points price of the most expensive hotels. For instance, Dan’s Deals: wrote AMAZING! Marriott’s New Award Chart Is A Dream Come True For Aspirational Hotels. This is indeed good news, but it needs to be tempered.
In many cases this won’t actually be a price cut of two-thirds like it appears at first glance.
Marriott has finally released hotel category assignments, letting us know the redemption pricing of hotels starting sometime in August. Hotels only received what category they’d be assigned to two weeks ago.
They’re highlighting that “Nearly 70 percent of all participating hotels can be redeemed for the same or fewer points.” That doesn’t actually sound good to me, though they point out 52% of hotels go down in price while 31% go up which is a little better.
We were promised these hotel brands would offer Platinum breakfast benefits. They don’t. They offer a food and beverage credit, which can be used any time during a stay.
That credit won’t cover breakfast at all of their properties, but the news isn’t as bad as it appeared at first — Marriott is updating their chart, which suggested the credit would be only once per stay rather than once per day (for the member and guest).
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 »
