Marriott Rewards offers “Loon No Further” Best Rate Guarantee-program that promises to match lower price found on the third party site and further discount it by 25% (if conditions are met).
Now, Marriott Rewards has tweaked the Rate Type Exclusions effective June 30, 2017, by excluding the largest OTA in China!
You can access Marriott’s web page for their guarantee here.
READ MORE: Marriott Rewards Rate & Bonus Points And Miles Promotions
Here are the changes:
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Rates on sites, applications and other sources, channels or outlets that do not provide the ability to make a real-time reservation (e.g., an “on request” rate), that do not provide immediate hotel confirmation, or that require 5 minutes or more to validate a reservation.
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Pre-paid, advance purchase, or non-refundable rates on Ctrip.
Real-time reservation on third party site are now required. Most rates on Chinese OTA called Ctrip are excluded such as prepaid, advance purchase and non-refundable ones (aren’t those 99% of the rates?).
Conclusion
Seems that Marriott here is losing control of their inventory to Ctrip and rather than cleaning up the house they rather exclude them from the Best Rate Guarantee program altogether.
I have no issue that “on request” type of rates are excluded from the guarantee as you cannot be sure if they are confirmed or not unless you actually place the booking.
