Marriott Rewards has quietly “enhanced” its Look No Further Best Rate Guarantee program that promises to match lower prices found on third party sites by excluding Design Hotels from it effective December 1, 2018.
Marriott Rewards earlier this year combined its own and Starwood’s best rate guarantee programs by effectively choosing the worst aspects from each.
You can access Marriott’s page for Look No Further Best Rate Guarantee here.
Here’s the change:
Design Hotels are excluded from the Best Rate Guarantee program effective December 1, 2018.
And here was the previous exception for Design Hotels:
You could only match against the absolute lowest rate found on Marriott’s website regardless what room or rate types other third party sites were offering.
Conclusion
SPG had the best Best Rate Guarantee program in the industry and the fairest for the consumers. They only compared the room types. Payment and cancellations terms didn’t have to match like they now do under the combined program.
Marriott used to process claims even for same day arrivals up to midnight local time. Now you must file the claim minimum 24 hours before the standard check in time.
Seems that Marriott cannot ensure that the lowest prices for Design Hotels are available for bookings on their own website. Quite often you can find them at substantial discount from DesignHotels.com that is not qualifying website for points or stay credit.
