When Marriott released the award categories for Marriott/SPG/Ritz-Carlton properties from August 1st, 2018 yesterday one thing that caught a lot of people’s attention was that top tier properties such as St. Regis Maldives, St Regis Bora Bora, Al Maha would be added to the regular award table. Previously these all suite properties had a special rate reserved for themselves and even when they went on sale for 35% off they were incredibly expensive. For example the St Regis Bora Bora normally costs 90,000 SPG points per night (270,000 Marriott points).
Under the new program these properties are set to be a category 8 properties and will cost 85,000 points per night, as you probably know by now category 8 won’t be introduced until 2019 so these properties will actually only cost 60,000 points per night. Insane value right? A property that previously cost 180,000 Marriott points will now cost a third of the price! The problem with that line of thinking is as follows:
- Marriott has confirmed that points bookings made at these properties will only apply to “standard rooms” and not some of the suites they have previously booked into. For example with the St Regis Bora Bora, most people go there for the overwater bungalows and when you made a booking for 60,000 SPG points that’s exactly what you received. They also have rooms that have beach or pool views that are significantly cheaper when booking with cash compared to the overwater bungalows. Somebody joked that they expect to see these properties come out with single bed closet rooms, but realistically they are definitely going to put you in the worse room available if you’re paying 60,000 points vs $600+ per night.
- Availability is going to suck. There is going to be a lot of people trying to book the exact same properties as you. I suspect places like St. Regis Bora Bora won’t have great availability to begin with, with a few token rooms available and they are going to get snapped up quickly. I know people have already started writing scripts to try and instabook rooms as soon as they go live on August 1st (something I absolutely do not condone and I hope Marriott puts things in place to prevent).
- Do you really want to travel there? A lot of these properties are incredible and maybe this is a once in a lifetime opportunity but personally I try not to choose hotels just because the cash price is exceptionally high. Experiencing an overwater bungalow isn’t something I actually think I’d enjoy and your hotel is only one part of the expense (keep in mind how expensive it is to get to these properties for example or how expensive food is).
I still think some of these properties present great value and some readers will undoubtedly be able to book them at this 60,000 point price. I do think that it’s a good idea to temper your expectations and maybe do some research on how much money you’ll spend out of pocket and if it’s something you’ll enjoy rather than just looking at the cash prices and thinking that you have to book there to just get the best ‘value’ out of your points. What are your thoughts? Will you have multiple browsers open with 100,000’s of points ready to book on August 1st?
I agree. I think a lot of people holding on to Marriott/SPG points are going to be very disappointed by the dangling enticement of the 8/1 award chart only to be left with no fancy hotel and a lost opportunity to get 120K miles for only 90K points.
With the 60,000 point a night thing, does it make any sense to book a Marriott Travel Package for category 8 or 9, or will that be the same thing as category 7? I would definitely like to know the answer to this question if anyone has it.
Also, can you book SPG properties with a Marriott travel package, now or after 8/1, using the free night certificates?
Thank you very much for the help!
No. It’s HIGHLY doubtful that a Cat 8 (40,000 points/night) or 9 (45,000 points/night) TP would map to new Cat 7 (60,000 points per night). At best, they may map to Cat 6 (since many Cat 8 and 9 hotels are moving to Cat 6 @50,000 points/night). Even that might be too generous for Marriott to do.
Ritz Tier 4 is more likely to map to new Cat 7 (provided those top tier hotels even have 7 nights available for you to use, which we do not know yet).
I think “Maldiving”, like “Vendoming” a couple years before it, hit it’s peak a year or two ago when most every blogger had to check-in there and rave about it to prove their worth. I too have no desire for a beach vacation. Really, to each his own, but how different are they?
Already spent my 100,000s of points on travel package with AS points. No regrets. I don’t think people are going to find availability at those rates tbh but hey, maybe someone will!
The key I think is point #2. Everybody and their sister has been told to jump on the ultra high end redemptions as soon as they can, which means you are competing with everyone who reads travel blogs worldwide. Even without scripts your odds are probably terrible.
If you really want to make the most of the changes, start with #3 and work backwards. Where do you really want to go, then what affect do the changes have on you getting there.
If your aspiration is to go to one, and this would save you a bundle, then it is great. But I think an often overlooked aspect is that it will still be a VERY expensive trip. I’m in this game to go on practically free vacations that would otherwise be out of my budget. Not to make a stupid expensive vacation a little less stupid expensive.
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And hey, 60k Marriott points may be viewed as a “discount” from future redemption rates at some of these hotels……but 60k/night is still a LOT of points! Personally I’d rather convert into 25k miles (as SPG/Marriott allows) in just about any airline program. Or redeem for lower level redemptions.
Re: Maldives. For our honeymoon (pre-churning) we spend 6 nights in an over-water bungalow at some non-chain resort (I forget which) for something like $600/night all-inclusive. I’m not a super beach person, but I thought it was great to be able to just jump directly into the water and swim/snorkel with so much sea life around. (The food was ok, and some of the other guests were a bit annoying, but I’ll refrain from turning this into a review.) I think it’s certainly worth doing once if it is affordable.
I haven’t looked too closely, but from what I’ve gathered about the points cost and then the cost of food at the chain hotels, I’m not sure they’re a good use of points vs just paying cash at some other resort (unless you’re just swimming in points).
Oh, and don’t forget for almost all Maldives resorts the ~$500/person roundtrip floatplane airfare from MLE, which is completely unavoidable and non-negotiable.
I’m not a fan of the new rewards chart. Some of the options are good and it looks like a lot went down, but when you factor in the peak rewards pricing I’m not sure that it’s actually a win for anyone.
Some of the rewards pricing seems to be based purely off of geographical location instead of actual quality of the hotel, too. A cheap hotel that I’ve stayed in a few times if I could stack bonuses to get a very cheap rate (quarterly bonuses + AmEx offers + CC points + base points) is now charging 50k Marriott Rewards points. This is a hotel in a decently big city but completely away from any of the tourist attractions. Effectively a conference/business hotel where no one would ever pay that many points to stay, especially when you can stay in the city center for the exact same amount of points.
The rates do get higher when a conference is happening, but that doesn’t seem like a valid reason to increase points redemptions. Other hotels just block out reward reservations entirely when a big conference is happening, which seems like the more logical thing to do.
On top of that, some of the hotels that went up that I’ve been to are definitely nice hotels, but the fact that not only did they go up in general, but then the peak pricing could make them go up even more.
I assume that many/most of the high end hotels that are “only” category 7 right now will either lock out reward reservations until they’re category 8, have extremely limited rewards reservations, or else they’ll have perma-peak pricing at 70k points per night until they go up to category 8. Possibly a combination of the last two, as well.
In the end, rewards points needed going down slightly doesn’t mean much, because most places you’d want to go may use peak pricing to increase the redemption to its previous value. Rewards going up could go up even more because of peak pricing. The big unknown here is how often peak pricing will go into effect. This severely limits people’s options. If you want to get a good deal and have good value for your points, you’d want to try and get off season pricing, but traveling off season to some places isn’t going to be nearly as useful or interesting as going when you would want to go.