Marriott Ditches “No Blackout Dates” Policy on ex-SPG Brands

When SPG was SPG (the loyalty program for brands such as Westin, W, Sheraton, The Luxury Collection, and St. Regis), they were famous for their industry-leading “No Blackout Dates” policy on award nights. What this meant was not that you could always get an award room, but you could always get an award room (and at the standard rate) if the standard room category, which is generally the least expensive room type, was available for cash.

That’s not to say that some hotels didn’t try to play games, such as by having only one room in the lowest category, but SPG tried hard to enforce brand standards and that included this policy.

When the merger with Marriott happened, the Terms and Conditions of the new Bonvoy program stated that ex-Marriott brands could have certain days with no award rooms at all and otherwise greatly limit redemptions as each hotel saw fit, within some boundaries.

At the same time, ex-SPG properties still had to adhere to the old no-blackout policy standard, meaning an easier time finding award space at those brands.

Loyalty Lobby caught a change which must have been made in December and not caught until now.

The relevant terms now state:

3.2.n. The Company has a “No Blackout Dates” policy, which means that, subject to the limitations and exclusions below, Participating Properties have standard rooms available every day for Award Redemptions. These limitations and exclusions are:

i. Participating Properties may limit the number of standard rooms available for redemption on a limited number of days.

You can always read the current Terms and Conditions on the Marriott website.

This means that even ex-SPG hotels can now restrict award nights in a way that is quite opaque to us as consumers.

Those formerly loyal to SPG have certainly struggled a bit with accepting the Marriott program as the new reality. This isn’t likely to help, yet I doubt many will really notice a difference.

Keep in mind that Bonvoy also ended the policy of giving 10 elite nights for meetings at the end of 2019.

While very understandable given the numbers of people using that method to get 10 elite nights with small meetings they didn’t need, they never announced the change and simply added the exclusion to the Terms and Conditions at the very end of December 2019, even refusing to honor it for people that booked rooms for 2020 before the change. And their promotions have been very lackluster as well.

We may be seeing what happens when one company had too large a share of hotel brands and hotels under its umbrella.

What do you think?