Marriott Rewards & SPG are moving to a combined award chart in August per the announcement on Monday last week and today issued examples with number of hotels in New York, Dubai, Paris, Bali and Caribbean/Mexico.
Marriott Rewards has nine rewards tiers and five for Ritz-Carlton hotels where SPG has seven (plus really separate one for hotels with no standard accommodation).
You can access Marriott’s page for these changes here.
READ MORE: Marriott Rewards Rate & Bonus Points And Miles Promotions
Award Chart:
As was disclosed last week, the combined program will have total of 8 award categories with off, standard and peak redemption periods.
Category 8 and off/on peak redemptions will be introduced in 2019. Category 8 hotels will be temporarily available at category 7 rates.
Award Examples:
Paris
Here you can see several Marriott properties moving up in number of points required for a free night.
New York
Here are some future category 8 properties that will be temporarily 7 where members can redeem at reduced price. Full service Marriott properties are moving higher to match the SPG ones.
Dubai
Ritz-Carlton moves down and two Le Meridien properties will require significantly more points.
Caribbean & Mexico
Here two Westin properties will require significantly more points and St. Regis in Mexico City will see its category drop.
Bali
Quite frankly I don’t understand this Laguna’s award category at all when it is at the same level as the Ritz-Carlton (both went up).
The W has been way overpriced using points considering the most recent rates at the property (more competition). The St. Regis is on sale as category 7 until 8 is introduced next year.
Conclusion
Marriott/SPG states that there will be more hotels requiring fewer points than hotels moving up. This doesn’t tell a lot because it is easy to make hotels cheaper where people don’t redeem while making desirable properties more expensive using points.
I would expect this award category combination to be somewhat difficult on the Marriott side especially at the high end markets where highest hotel category has been 45,000 points per night. I would expect these to cost significant more. Let’s see when the combined award chart for Hawaii is introduced….
And the examples above are likely favorable for Marriott/SPG and there are quite a few hotels missing from the markets from where they are from.
