Marriott has announced that dynamic award pricing will be introduced on March 29, 2022. Previously Marriott announced that 97% of properties will still price between current peak and off peak pricing. Marriott has released a list of the 3% of properties that will be increasing in price (click here for the list) and unfortunately it’s highly targeted towards the most popular award redemptions and the increases are significant. Other properties increasing in price to the maximum peak pricing is also a significant price increase and from 2023 there will be no caps on how much properties can cost.
The only positive is that you can use points in addition to free night certificates. I actually don’t mind fixed value reward programs such as Southwest, but this seems like an attempt by Marriott to frequently devalue the program with no oversight. It’s difficult to know how bad this change will be, but I suspect we will find out in early 2023.
“can use points in addition to free night certificates”: cannot seem to get this to work. When will this feature be live?
Same here
trying to cancel and rebook since the points price dropped like 5000 points in our case… when we cancel the points were never refunded… now I have to call in
Marriott’s value can be seen in the value of their promises. From the late Arne Sorenson:
“We’ve heard from SPG members loud and clear when they say ‘Tell me I’ll be OK,’” Sorenson said. “You’ll be OK. I want to make sure we continue to earn that loyalty.”
Not much value there.
Many hotels not on the list(s) jumped up too. This was a general devaluation with a ‘dynamic pricing’ distraction thrown in.
Looks like that 5 night stay in London just isn’t happening!
Tampa rates went up by at least 4000/nt during upcoming bar exam compared to redemption last week.
I’ve got 6 nights booked this year and I rebooked 2 nights and saved 4000 points. For the other 4 nights it would’ve cost me 78,000 more points. The most significant increases are the Domes Miramare in Corfu Greece went up from 60,000 points for 2 nights to 108,000. I was actually surprised when I was able to book it for 60k. 1 night in Big Sky Montana the Residence Inn went up from 40,000 to 60,000.
Sounds about right. I got one thousand points saved for my midwest trip. But my VA Beach property went up 19,000 points a night if I rebooked.
Booked one of the Maldives properties a couple days ago. Same room is now 2x the points. Ouch.
Don’t forget that they’re easing people into this with caps for this year. In 2023 there will be no caps so it’ll be as great as Hilton’s program.
I had a couple of 5-night reservations in South Africa. One went up by 1k, and the other down by 1k. So I took the free 1k, but overall the changes are kind of a snoozer for me.