In August Marriott & SPG will have a unified rewards program. One thing that still isn’t clear is what will happen to those who have booked hotel + air travel packages. With these packages purchases receive airline miles and hotel certificates that are good at differing award categories. At the moment there is no clarity regarding this at all and it seems that Marriott isn’t even sure what’s going to happen with a PR rep on Flyertalk stating (thanks to ASOT550 for making us aware):
Any outstanding awards for certificates with a pre-defined category (like Chase or MegaBonus promotional certificates) will be converted to a commensurate value with the new award schedule. Other floater certificates will be cancelled and converted to equivalent points, credited to the member’s account for future redemption.
If you are asking for an exact conversion amount, all we can tell you is we are currently reviewing how to handle existing travel package awards already in members’ accounts that remain unattached. Members should make every effort to book and attach these certificates prior to our programs becoming one to maximize their usage as this conversion information may or may not be forthcoming before the programs merge.
Best regards,
William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts LLC
The problem is that Marriott is completely changing the award chart as seen below:
Let’s say you have a hotel + air package that gives you seven nights at a category 6 property for example. Under the old program that would be usable on properties that cost 30,000 points per night. If you did a direct conversion to category 6 under the new program it would be usable on properties that cost 50,000 points per night. That’s obviously not going to happen, but there’s no way to do a direct conversion to properties up to 30,000 points per night as there is no award category at 30,000 points anymore. You’d either need to devalue the certificate and make it usable on category 4 or improve the certificate and make it usable on category 5.
Points refunds aren’t really an option either as that means people have been able to purchase the miles component of the certificate for cheap. For example a category six seven night package with 120,000 miles would cost 300,000 miles. If you refunded the points equivalent of the seven nights that would be 210,000 points meaning somebody had redeemed 90,000 Marriott points for 120,000 miles (an incredible deal).
My guess is that Marriott actually does know what they are doing and they plan for it to be more generous than they’d ideally like and they don’t want to release the details to prevent people cashing in on the value. If they go the other direction the backlash is going to overshadow what has otherwise been mostly positive press. The alternative is they do something crazy like keeping an list of properties that are currently eligible for that certificate level and using that until these certificates are either used up or expire. What do you think will happen? Are you redeeming Marriott points for a travel package in the hopes it’s a positive change?
I just redeemed some points for a travel package and asked about what will happen next month. I was told that we will be grandfathered in so that we can use it for the categories in the current/original travel package. (My customer rep did seem quite knowledgeable.)
To do that, it means you also can’t book SPG hotels since they are not included in the categories of Marriott right now. This seems quite strange since the program should be “one” after merge.
i have 309k points, whats the best strategy to maximize ( i can go for either untied or American miles) , should i go for a cat 1-5 or cat 6 certificate, any suggestions?
As someone who’s done a lot of corporate M&A, what you have to understand is there are a ton of expenses that get recognized in a merger of this size. Everything from severance to differences in tax liabilities which create gains/losses, etc… I am not hopeful to get full point value for the certificates, but if Marriott was ever going to do something like this to generate this much goodwill with it’s customer base this would be the time to do it. Wall Street always looks past integration costs/expenses so for Marriott this would be a freebie. Again, I think it would be crazy if they did this but I could see it happening. This is clearly why the SPG to Marriott conversion ratio was so generous, it was a one time merger related expense = freebie.
For the purposes of Doc’s question at the end of his blog post and your comment:
What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling did people care. Everyone reading this blog is now dumber because of it. I award you no points, and my God have mercy on your soul.
Briah H, why you mad bro?
You clowns are so paranoid. What that language means in business speak is you purchased a travel package with a 7 night stay, so use that 7 night stay where you intended to use it when you purchased the package. It’s as simple as that, and not a warning of any sort.
Members should make every effort to book and attach these certificates prior to our programs becoming one to maximize their usage as this conversion information may or may not be forthcoming before the programs merge.
Keeping a list sounds like a nightmare for everyone, I’m leaning towards Marriott is staying quiet on the subject to prevent arbitrage.
If you attach a 5 or 7 night hotel certificate from a travel package can you cancel it for a refund? I am starting to think you might as well attach it and then cancel it to lock in the rate. However you may loose if they reval these certs on an equal category basis – i.e. old cat 5 now new cat 5 etc.
Currently yes, after August 1st, detaching May not be possiable, no one knows for sure.
But if you attach now terms going forward are what they are now. Are you leaving yours floating?
Another possibility is a points refund but ring fence the points and limit them to only hotel redemptions and possibly put an expiration on them. This would allow folks to use the points which are more flexible than the certs and might make up for some actual/perceived loss in value from said conversion. Iberia did something like this with their recent promotion and Marriott has had a lot more time to plan it out.
I think you should had tip the question poser as he was able to pin down lurker to an answer rather than who made you aware of the exchange. Maybe both dunno…
It’s hard giving credit to people, I gave credit to where I found the information and the person who provided the information I think that’s enough in this case
call me crazy, but my money is on the 210,000-ish point refund. i think its hard to tell someone they cant redeem 7 nights at a property they could when they got the travel cert due to a merger in which the rules werent clearly defined ahead of time (as opposed to hotels simply moving categories which is often announced and given notice). i think they’ll view it as a one time write-off/courtesy to some of the more loyal members (who are generally the ones with the certs) and bite the bullet knowing that there is no straight conversion that is easy or practical to implement, and nobody will be able to complain that they got screwed over. this is wishful thinking on my part too (i have two category 6, 7-night certs, but i think it makes sense given what they’ve indicated thus far. then of course you would have those people who preemptively tied their 7 night certs to future reservations to hedge against a devaluation and if they arent able to get the 210k points (which would make sense cause they wouldnt be losing value because their booking would still be intact), then they would make a stink but wouldnt have much of case IMO. i have no reason to tie my certificates to a reservation because i have no specific redemption in mind, but even if i did, i would probably hold off in hopes of what i just said coming true
crazy
Yup I agree. Certificate good for a hotel but not anymore after August? Better get a refund.
I don’t understand why they are trying to treat the Chase certificates and the package certificates differently. In the case of a cat 1-5 certificate, it’s exactly the same thing, just either for 1 night or for 7 nights.
I also think they’ll just do nothing. If you bought a cat 1-5, you can redeem for a cat 1-5 now, or a month from now, and they’ll just absorb the extra “value”.
Huge absorption to take. Talking about price differences of 20,000+ points per night.