Yesterday Marriott EVP and Chief Financial Officer, Leeny Oberg spoke at the Goldman Sachs Lodging, Gaming, Restaurant, & Leisure Conference (full webcast can be listened to here). Some key notes:
- She expects the programs to be brought together by the end of 2018. I’d personally be surprised if they meet this deadline considering the wording (‘hopeful’, ‘not promising’ it will be completed by then) and tone she used.
- Noted that the company is in active discussions with all parties (e.g Chase & American Express) regarding new co-branded credit card deal and expects a richer credit card deal as a result. Also noted that Chase & American Express are competing to offer more benefits to the consumer.
If anybody has a full transcript that would be very much appreciated.
Hat tip to View From The Wing
Amex cant be used in at least 25% of purchases. This isn’t 1985, they’re awful and international and small businesses dont even bother accepting their higher than visa/mc swipe fees. Meeting minimum spend with amex is always a challenge.
I got personal SPG about 3 months ago. Although I haven’t redeem the points yet, I feel like it was by far the hardest card for me to hit the minimum spend. Everywhere I go, my AMEX gets shun. My car insurance, autoshop, small shops, and restaurants all take Visa or Master card only. I ended up funding a new checking and savings accounts to hit the $6k for the extra 10k points.
Where did you find a checking or savings account that accepts Amex to fund?
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/bmo-harris-200-checking-bonus-available-nationwide-2/
He hit 1k spend each on checking and savings account funding from bmo. to get the extra 10k spg points, you need to spend an additional $2000,not $3000, after the initial bonus requirment, having 6months in all to do so.
Need an advise.
With the last increased bonus offer of Amex SPG back in April I now have approx 90K SPG points. May even get 50-60K more with their business cards (makes sense to use that once-a-lifetime option if Amex are to loose that battle).
Given the prospective merge of programs by the end of 2018 would you advise to burn them all before the merge? Obviously nobody knows how it will work out, but would appreciate your thoughts, especially that I am relatively new to the game and do not have past experiences from any other merges. What would you do?
Minor point – I treat SPG points as hotel currency mostly, as Chase URs & SW RRs cover my airplane expenses well ehough with transfers to partners and 1.5x on CSR.
Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts!!
Currently are you using the SPG points or transferring them to Marriott at 1:3? If the later I don’t think things will change too much, but I suspect we will get a bit of warning before SPG/Marriott make too many major changes.
Doc, on a related note… when you transfer SPG points to Marriott at 1:3 they do NOT count towards lifetime status. For people that are striving to get lifetime status, do you have any suggestions? Perhaps if we wait until the merge is complete and the points will convert automatically they will count towards lifetime status then? I doubt that will happen, but I suppose even the smallest chance is better than transferring them now with a 0% chance of them counting… do you know of any other “tricks” or have any other suggestions? Thanks.
I doubt they will count towards lifetime status, best hope is that when the merger is complete they count all your previous stays and information towards Marriott lifetime.
I have not used them yet, but was trying to find a good redemption in SPG family of hotels. Seems like redeeming at Marriott is not as good.
May be this is an idea for a post? There are many posts on how to use points/miles with airlines the best way, but there are not much information on good redemption for hotels.
For example, if I would like to have a beach vacation paid by points… and preferably reasonable amount of points. What are my best options? Especially in combination with ability to get to that destination for reasonable price/points/miles.
I already compiled a full list of SPG properties with beaches by categories, with links etc… if you think this could be a good beginning for the post I can share it with you, so you can make a post out of it…
As usual, thank you VERY much for the great blog!
Problem with hotel redemptions is that there are so many different options makes it really difficult to write specific redemption posts like that
Also, Chase has demonstrated that they are willing to offer more generous rewards on some of their credit cards to the point where they become a loss leader, as it helps to attract customers to their other banking services. AMEX doesn’t really have the ability to do this, since nearly all of their profits come solely from annual fees and swipe fees, so they likely won’t be able to offer as strong of a card as Chase will. Of course, presently, the AMEX SPG card is an outlier and doesn’t fit this general trend, but I think that’s more due to the nature of SPG points and their high value when compared to Marriott points. When forced to compete for the contract head-to-head in a merged loyalty program (that will likely more closely represent the existing Marriott Rewards program rather than the SPG program), AMEX may struggle to offer as strong a card as Chase. Hopefully the consumer will benefit from this competition, but we’ll have to wait and see…
yah load up on that Chase $1=1pt setup. that is awesome
Not sure how your comment is at all relevant. We are speculating on the future credit card deal, not comparing the existing credit cards… It is 100% guaranteed to change…
Yeah, that’s great…if you just want to earn the bonus once in your life.
Give me Chase offering 80% of the benefit Amex would, but letting me churn it every 2 years.
“Richer credit card deal for all” except for AMEX and/or Chase of course… competition is always a good thing, and in this case will likely result in a much better deal for Marriott. Chase won’t want to lose the massive Marriott/Ritz portfolio, and although the SPG AMEX portfolio isn’t nearly as large in comparison, you had better believe that AMEX will fight to keep this business after the loss of Cosco, JetBlue, etc. (although securing the exclusive Hilton contract might ease their concerns a bit). Marriott will definitely be getting a better deal from whichever card issue it ends up choosing.
The real question is, will these savings be pocketed to help Marriott’s bottom line, or will they be passed along to the consumers (or will the savings possibly be split between both parties)? Considering the general climate and recent trends among loyalty programs, I’d speculate that most of the savings will likely be pocketed and NOT passed along to the consumers, but who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky.
When they made the statement about the richer credit card deal, do you know if it was being directed towards investors, or towards consumers? That might give some context…
It was made in relation to consumers and investors
“Richer credit card deal for all” can’t possibly be accurate.
AMEX isn’t going to raise the swipe fee. If they pay much more per point to win this negotiation, ultimately the cardholders have to get less for AMEX to make the same profit.
Maybe Amex is willing to earn less in exchange for volumes?
Pretty sure if the CFO uses this kind of language, I’ll believe competing companies will try to find a way. They know a little more about this than you do 🙂