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Today marks the official death of Starwood Preferred Guest and Marriott Rewards, and the birth of the (still) currently unnamed new joint loyalty programme. One of the big unanswered questions leading up to today has been what existing Marriott Travel Packages will be worth in the new programme for those of us who haven’t already attached our Certificates to a booking.
Oceans of digital ink have been spent speculating about this (including here at InsideFlyer), but the reality has now been revealed – and at first glance it’s not very pretty I’m afraid.
The official Marriott/SPG representatives over on FlyerTalk shared the following this evening:
“Members,
For members with existing Travel Packages (booked prior to today and not yet attached to a reservation), today we are able to share how they will convert within the newly unified program. Please see the full chart below.
No existing Travel Package certificate is losing value in terms of points and, with the new Free Night Award Chart that goes live today, 70% of our hotels either stayed at the same redemption rate threshold or moved down. As we structured the conversion chart, we considered the introduction of peak and off-peak redemption rates, which will be introduced in early 2019. This means that if you have an existing Category 9 certificate, which converts to Category 6 starting today, holders will still be able to attach the certificate to a stay when redemption rates within that category are at their highest.”
Here’s the chart showing how things map across:
As you can see, the way they’ve gone about this is pretty rough. The only way a current Category 6 Certificate can be fairly said to map across to a new Cat 1-4, for example, is by factoring in the Peak pricing that is due to come in sometime next year. The reality is that a Cat 1-4 is only actually worth a maximum of 25k Points per night today, when yesterday it was worth 30k.
I speculated a few weeks ago that we could see something like this:
“Cat 1-5 (7.5k-25k) —-> Cat 1-4 (7.5k-25k) FINE
Cat 6 (30k) —-> Cat 4 (25k) BAD
Cat 7 (35k) —-> Cat 5 (35k) FINE
Cat 8 (40k) —-> Cat 5 (35k) BAD
Cat 9 (45k) —-> Cat 5 (35K) VERY BAD”
That’s ended up being not too far off, although it isn’t what I actually believed would happen.
Note that at least current Cat 9s are winners in the new system, going up from 45k to 50k (in ‘real’ terms – the peak 60k pricing doesn’t come into force until next year so is irrelevant right now). You can see the new award chart below and it’s only “standard” pricing which applies right now:
Bottom line
What do you think about how the Travel Package Certificates are being converted?
I’m a Cat 6 and they’ve based these figs on next year’s peak periods. Really not impressed with Marriott at all and wouldn’t be surprised if they have to back track on this.
I’m not sure about back-tracking completely, but a 30K refund has some potential.
Yep, Cat 6 and 8 have been swindled here at first glance. Hopefully we’ll see a Points refund or something to cover the difference.
I’m surprised they have allowed this to come out via an FT post like that – unless they want to get a feel for reaction prior to a more formalised communication?
Even if it was testing the water, I’m surprised they have done so without at least catering for the people in the Cat6, Cat8 and T1-3 – with a plan for an automated points rebate, at the very least.
I’m going to wait for a more official announcement I think. They must cater for the 6, 8, T1-3 people – I simply can’t believe they won’t do so.
The issue and question is more around other bits IMO. Including people being told it will map directly (how good is their phone system? – do they fancy trawling through phone recordings?) and people who booked long ago and were told they could upgrade/downgrade. If you argue (as I think you can) that any future upgrade should be a new prevailing points differences, then downgrades should be on the same basis.
Personally, I looked at where I actually knew I might want to stay in the next two years for a week, it was a mix of (new) Cat 7 and (new) Cat 5. I went for old Cat 7, on the hope it would map across 1:1, or be a refund. As it is, has mapped to cat 5 I can live with that. And I would not have wanted to spend old T4-5 level of points on it. So I’m reasonably content I think – not happy, but not sad either.
We still don’t know – unless I’ve missed it – how peak/off-peak/standard will be handled in the new packages. From the logic of their conversion mapping, it would suggest new packages are valid at all times.
If it was me, I’d offer people some flexibility based upon this. Either generally – so you can go up a category if you go standard, or double up if you go off-peak. That might be good-will earning – while also shifting the redemption load into non-peak periods.
Hi Joe
On a related topic – have you seen your points transferred properly from the old SPG site to the new Marriott version? I have noticed issues with my Amex SPG Card as bizarrely the card started earning 3 points from 1 August but my billing cycle is mid July to mid August. So all my card spend from 15 July to 1 August were on 1 SPG point per £ and now that is what I expect to be credited in my new Marriott account which is an issue ( it also happened to me with few referral bonus) I earned during that period! Also any thoughts on whether I can now combine the Marriott (old Marriott) points with the new Marriott (SPG) points? I have to lock in some redemptions but my points are spread between the two programs! Cheers for your help
Hi Vigs,
There’s a whole bunch of IT issues with data being transported across properly at the moment (not surprising really given the scale I suppose), so I’m just sitting it out for a week or 2 and will chase up anything then if there are still discrepancies.
If you need to make bookings, I’d give Marriott a call to see if they can help, but get yourself a cup of tea, some snacks and a good book first, because I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the current wait times are awful. Good luck!
Cheers Joe! Definitely keeping fingers crossed