Marriott has announced that a number of changes will be going into effect on September 14th, 2019. These changes are the following:
- Introduction of peak and off peak pricing
- Fifth night free changed to Stay 5, Pay 4
- Changes to point advance
- Changes to cash & points
Contents
Peak & Off Peak Pricing
The award chart will be as follows:
Peak and off peak pricing will be determined by a computer algorithm and properties won’t be able to affect this. Dates will be recalculated once per month, with Marriott ensuring there is an almost equal amount of peak and off peak dates – although most dates will fall under the standard pricing. Existing reservations won’t automatically reprice, meaning you’ll need to cancel and rebook if a property changes in price for your specific dates.
Fifth Night Free Change
Fifth night free will be renamed to stay for 5, pay for 4 and your cheapest night will be refunded.
Points Advance Change
When using points advance you’ll effectively be able to hold a room, but you can’t hold the price you receive. So if you use points advance when a property is off peak and then it becomes standard or peak you’ll be required to pay the higher price.
Cash & Points Change
There will be a new cash & points award chart as well.
Our Verdict
We have known that this peak and off peak pricing was coming for some time, overall I think the implementation is worse than expected but I guess there will be a lot of people booking rooms at standard/peak pricing only to cancel them if the price decreases.
Hat tip to TPG
If I rebook my 3 day trip, it would be $27 more but 5k points less. That seems like a good deal.
about the 7 nite travel pkg, can we still upgrade from cat 4 to higher cat? think few folks earlier this yr. were able to get 45k pts credited to the acct to swap / upgrade to higher cat
if any folks was able to do this earlier this yr, will appreciate more details like contact # & which dept to directly get this done. Thx
I got one offpeak among 7 reservations. Some of them are peak now.
I have an upcoming reservation [Jan 2020], and it WAS repriced. A note was added into my reservation:
“Deduct your points now for your stay, or we’ll automatically take care of this for you 15 days prior to your arrival.
The points rate for your reservation may increase or decrease until you have deducted the points from your account to cover the reservation. “
So….yes my reservation was repriced. And seems it can change again, until I actually hit the “Deduct your points now” link in my reservation—or when Marriott does it automatically at the 15 day mark.
This was something that they announced last year would change if you booked and didn’t have the points available.
I have the RC and the AMEX Brilliant card and have 2 50K certificates…. absolute rubbish with the new pricing. Most RCs cannot be booked at all or the few possible not most of the time at 50k points… and what’s absolutely stupid is the 50k certificate cannot be supplemented with points… that’s insult to injury IMO. Ritz Carlton card giving a certificate that cannot be at Ritz Carlton…
The program is just terrible. We should all vote with our feet and those of us on social media make it widely felt…
marriott bonvoy sucks and is a joke. screw this peak/offpeak. plus suite night awards are pointless and useless. hotels rarely ever honor them. i’m ambassador and still very few hotels seem to care
I still have all 5 of my Suite Night Awards and I lost 2 of them last year (though I used 8 out of the 10 I had in Europe). I find that they’re easier to use overseas than in the States.
I’ve been looking at the new changes and been wondering at the really random days where the hotel has peak pricing. Are they doing it like a certain amount of rooms have “off peak” and once those are taken they’ll just jump to peak for everyone else?
I’d think they’d jump to standard in anticipation of the night being more popular, and then off-peak in anticipation of being almost full, no? Not saying the 2-step hop is impossible, but I don’t think it’ll be the norm.
Not a fan of Bonvoy by a long shot, but this change just saved me 10,000 points with my upcoming reservation (cat 6 property), which is pretty neat.
I am also surprised that the CSR was able to adjust the reservation directly (so the confirmation number stays the same and all that), without needing me to cancel my current reservation and re-book.
I just did a quick search of my yearly trip. Mixture of regular 35k points and 40k points for the entire month depending on the day and ZERO 30k point nights. Sounds like a bunch of BS to me. We will see.
Marriott is trying to ass-bang their members any way they can! Did they hire a former AA or UA exec?