Marriott Rewards & SPG have now published combined award chart that will come into effect in early August when programs are merged.
According to Marriott, 52% of the hotels will require fewer points while 31% will require more. Members Can redeem at category 7 levels for category 8 hotels until early 2019. Marriott has now included previously SPG’s all suite properties such as Sr Regis Bora Bora and Maldives into the regular award chart (great savings!).
You can access Marriott’s page for the new award charts here.
READ MORE: Marriott Rewards Rate & Bonus Points And Miles Promotions
You can use the various options to sort the hotels based on country or change in number of points. The search function works too if you can search by country or by name.
Here are category 8 hotels:
Note that you can redeem at all these at 60,000 points per night until early 2019.
Quite a few Ritz-Carlton’s are moving up in the number of points required for a free night.
Cash + Points
It is interesting to see what kind of participation there will be among hotels with this option. You can consider this as effectively buying points.
PointSavers
These are discounted 6% to 20% off their usual number of points required. Previously Marriott discounted their awards by flat 5,000 points per level.
Conclusion
I will have another post about this tomorrow when I have had more time to digest these changes and have deeper look at the all the 6,500 or so properties moving up and down.
The ability to book at greatly reduced rates at the much sought after properties in Bora Bora and Maldives can be a theoretical benefit considering how few standard rooms they must have each.
My first thought is that at least this is not a complete disaster. What are your thoughts?
I have noticed few surprising award price reductions, but more of surprising price increases. This one is plainly insane:
Aloft Bangkok Sukhumvit 11 (which goes for about 2200 THB + taxes) goes up from 9000 / 12000 (weekend/weekday) points to 17500 points! And it’s an average property whose only advantage is its location targeted for night-life.
Can’t imagine who would pay about 150 USD worth of points instead of 80 USD cash.
must be too many people using points in the past, so now they jack it up. I bet most of it is based on % point redemption, with the hope to reduce it over time until it levels out. Thats at least what I would do. They always prefer cash versus points as even though points are a liability, I imagine they value them at a fraction of what we value them for balance sheet purposes
That is how Marriott has traditionally based the redemption rates (number of redemptions) and seems that the new program follows their system. SPG based it more on the room rates.
You sure about that? Coz I’m used to redeem SPG points at airport hotels (there are plenty of them in Cat 1 and 2) that normally retails for $100-150: DTW, IAD, SLC, SVO, GYD – those are hardly aspirational. Then we’ve got LAX, AMS, BRU and so on where rates could be similar or just slightly higher ($150-200) but they’re all in Cat 4-5 for rewards. I assumed it’s the same thing where people tend to redeem you’ll find the worst value.
Yeah. Doesn’t make sense but there are always foolish people that really don’t know better where to use and where not.
Are they keeping the 5th night free?
They are.
Checked a few Marriott properties, and from what I can see the properties with already high redemption points requirement went even more up, and the lower or mid level either went down or stay the same. Some properties have been requiring the same number of points for the past five years even (for example, JW Marriott Seoul). Overall, the point charts are not too bad actually, much better than Hilton`s sneaky devaluation, which they continue doing.
Thanks for the article. Just correcting one error… The point savers are not anything close to 20% off base rate. They vary wildly, with the highest for off peak being 20%. Most are below 10%.
Not sure it matters though, I’ve never seen a point savers rate. And this idea that it’ll be point savers in high season is just plain silly.
You are right. The discount starts at 6%. FIxed that. Thanks!
Every hotel that interests me was either overpriced before and remains the same price or has a new rate that’s even worse. I suppose if your aspiration is to stay at something like the Courtyard Boise Airport (with no free breakfast for top tier elites!), then you may find the new program a better deal. For me, the consistently worse prices combined with the ongoing devaluation for a program that doesn’t even exist yet tells me that Marriott really couldn’t care less about me. When Hilton starts to look good by comparison, you know you’ve got problems.
I couldn’t concur more. The day I started to appreciate their free breakfast at Hilton (and I have been just a pale HH Gold) was the day when I discovered my SPG Platinum meant at most 2 pm late checkout and it was….upon availability only.
I think Marriott made a smart business move with delayed Cat 8 intro. Nothing prevents them to introduce it on Aug, 1. With the delay they effectively discounting top SPG properties and will get a lot of positive publicity from bloggers. In the end we’ll get everything more expensive then it used to be (except a few SPG properties that used to be priced at crazy levels).
1. No more 45K cap and Marriott top properties are getting 50-100% more expensive.
2. Mid range properties that used to be a good value are also getting more expensive.
3. A lot of low level SPG properties getting more expensive.
At the same time it’s not too bad. They paid for the merger not to provide us with better value. Could’ve been much worse (and will be in 2-3 years I bet).
I have made a booking (hold) for a Marriott branded hotel for December 2018 at 40k points, but haven’t actually paid the 40k points yet as Marriott allows you to hold it and pay the points 24 or48 hours before the stay. After August, this hotel will cost 50k points per night. Do I need to pay this 40k points before August or am I good to wait till Nov/Dec and then pay this 40k points?