A few days ago, we started hearing about how many (most?) Marriott properties suddenly were requiring anywhere from about 10% more points than the day before to in some cases around ~80% more (!).
Now we all know that Marriott has joined the club of “we price things dynamically” and “because we price dynamically we aren’t being transparent with you in the first place about what anything will ever cost and therefore when we drastically change what we are going to charge you for that hotel you’ve been saving up for, we don’t have to tell you (ha ha!!) and how will you complain because we never made any promises that the points you collect (or in some cases even buy!) will get you anything in particular” – they technically feel like it’s fine to devalue without warning.
At least it goes something like that.
Ever since the SPG merger, things with Marriott (remember when Bonvoy was just hilarious to even say and now we are all used to it?!), things with Marriott have just slid downhill at an ever increasing rate. Since SPG points converted 1:3 to Marriott, that ratio sticks in my head and when I remember paying 10,000 SPG points for a room that is now 140,000 points, it’s hard not to cringe.
At the same time, service across the board for elite members has generally gotten worse and I have to say that the elite experience has gotten worse especially since the Brilliant credit card started offering Platinum status. There are way too many status members, making upgrades tough to get (too many elites for not enough suites), the lounges are more crowded, and the breakfast benefit has been watered down by properties that want to spend as little as possible since *they* don’t value elite members – only the Marriott booking channel. i.e. they like to take but not to give. And the current Marriott execs seem just fine with hotels doing whatever. they want given that their primary mission is simply more rooms to sell which means more hotels which means the hotels are their primary customer. In the SPG days, the guests always felt primary (do you remember that if you complained about a hotel, the hotel actually had to pay for the complaint to be investigated leading to more on-property resolution of issues?).
Anyway, it wasn’t easy to tell the extent of the carnage from this week’s devaluation (and to be clear, it IS a devaluation even if Marriott doesn’t publish an award chart or a hotel’s award category in their system anymore.
But (and I found this only via Gary at View from the Wing so kudos to to all the blogs he keeps up with!) someone named Archie who writes a blog called Seal The Deals Travel broke things down on this Reddit post.
In Categories 1-8 (which means nothing to 99.9999% of us since categories are not shown anywhere but are still used by Marriott systems), the average damage on the max points rate ranged from 0-12.5% (only one category had no change). To give you an idea, a Category 8 hotel topped out at 130,000 points before and now tops out at 140,000 points.
When you get above that, to the true aspirational properties that people like me save up for, the damage is worse.
The St. Regis and Ritz Carlton in the Maldives jumped from a max of 164,000 points to a max of 198,000 points a night – a 20% increase. That is up to an extra 136,000 points on a 5 night stay (5th night free).
Many people have been saving for the luxurious JW Marriott Masai Mara safari property. That used to top out at 132,000 points. Now it STARTS at 192,000 points and tops out at 236,000 points. This is a crazy 78% increase.
Imagine if the day before the devaluation you bought a ton of points to top off for your 5 night stay, only to find you are now 424,000 points short?!
And while the North Island property in the Seychelles was not one I’ve ever seen anyone go to, in December 2021, I wrote about how you could book it for 365,000 points a night. That now starts at 443,000 points a night and tops at 605,000 points a night. Almost double in just 3 years.
At the same time I wrote that article (Five of the Most Expensive Hotels You Can Stay Using Points), it was 85,000 points to stay at Al Maha (the famous all-inclusive desert resort outside Dubai. Today? 88,000 – 152,000 points per night. Actually not too bad if you can get the very low end, but most of the time you’ll be paying about 50%-80% more than 3 years ago.
This also puts a great many rooms out of reach of the credit card certificates from the Bonvoy Brilliant and Ritz Carlton credit cards, which are worth 85,000 points and can be topped off with up to 15,000 points – or up to 100,000 points total. A lot more rooms top that magic 100k mark now.
The best I can tell, total inflation in that 3 year time frame as a whole (US CPI) is about 12%.
That’s bad – but I’m not sure how Marriott justifies increases of up near 80% when I do not think prices have gone up nearly that much. Google tells me average hotel room rates are up about 10-20% overall since 2021.
It’s yet another reminder that it’s always best to have flexible point currencies that you can move where the value is. Instead of accruing interest, specific hotel points and airline miles always are worth less over time – often at a rate that far increases how much less a US dollar is worth one that same time frame.
Thoughts?
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