NJUPINTHEAIR

The error that they have committed is that they moved a number of the Full Service Marriott/Renaissance properties that were still in a city location from a Category 4 to a Category 5. This might dissaude a number of Gold and above elites from attempting the megabonus promotions, as the redemption --if one exists -- will not be at a property that could provide them with access to the lounge.

Further, many decent Category 5 properties in either desirable city locations or resort locations are moving up to a Category 6, thereby negating much of the benefit of holding the Chase Marriott Platinum Premier Visa for the free night cert. At $85/year, one could still make it work nicely if you redeem at a desirable location.

As I have stated above, one can get the similar Priority Club Visa, but instead of $85 it is $49 and instead of a diminished Cat 5 hotel supply, one can choose up to and including any Intercontinental in the whole wide world.

Thus, if both spouses have the P/C card, for approximately the amount of the Marriott Visa, one could obtain 2 P/C certs for any property in their entire portfolio!

socrates

yes

socrates

remember that might be Host's experience but might not be market wide (I'd have to go back through the data from Smith Travel but I believe the market actually showed positive RevPAR growth) and going back far enough Host Hotels was once known as Marriott Corporation (Marriott International was a division of Marriott Corporation)

libuser

I wonder any of the archive folks, do you remember what the %ages of increases/decreases have been over the years?

I wonder how that stacks vs their previous inflations...

socrates

I'm not saying your opinion isn't valid but Starwood's distribution is vastly different than MI's - this wouldn't be a fair comparison

swag

I think that the pain here isn't the category increases themselves. We never like devaluations, but mathematically, this one really isn't that bad. 15% of hotels are going up 5K each. That averages about to 20% increase for the hotels going up, so probably only 3-4% system-wide, when all hotels are included. We've all experienced much worse.

No, I agree with others - the issue here for me are the free night certs from the Chase Visa and the mega-bonuses. The problem is that they aren't upgradeable. A cat 5 going to cat 6 may be a 20% increase, but if you want to use a cat 5 cert, you;re just SOL.

I wonder if MR would consider making these certs upgradeable? Why not alleviate some of the pain here by letting us spend 5K points to convert a cat 5 cert to cat 6, or a cat 4 to cat 5?

BostonFlyer1624

Glad to see that every single Marriott within 50 miles of Boston is moving up a category.

nova08

I don't know, I think what get's some of us is...

A number of properties around Boston and Philly and other major cities are all moving up and just about every EWR property. These are the hotels that I would use points at, not the Courtyard in Sioux Falls, SD that is unaffected (no offense to the Sioux Falls CY, I've stayed there many times and its a nice place).

Royal17

Thats the first thing I noticed as I am in Boston quarterly and always used to stay at Marriotts with points. Going elsewhere on the hotel choice after these changes.

socrates

That is the point - supply and demand, everyone else agrees with you and also uses their points at these very same hotels while many fewer guests use them in Sioux Falls meaning Sioux Falls should be cheaper than the others

Confoosed

Summer Olympics?

nova08

They have blocked point redemption for most London area properties during the Olympics. The only hotel I could find the last week in July was the LHR marriott and the first week in August had two more available but they are even further out of the city than LHR.

linsj

I travel to a couple of places annually that don't have Hiltons (only chain where I have status) but do have Marriotts and Starwoods. I decided to switch to Marriott and just got the Visa card. Big mistake. The card won't be worth keeping when the annual fee kicks in next year since I won't be able to use the annual cert with the properties moving up in categories. So it's back to Starwoods in those locations.

nova08

I don't know which Visa card people have in connection with the devaluation of the certs that come with them. However I will say the Premier card with the addition of 15 elite nights is worth the ~$80 annual fee. It essentially makes getting lifetime Silver a futile effort.

msuroo

Yikes, that's a lot of 4 -> 5's. I really liked those Cat 4 certs too.

Anyway, a couple of questions.

1) Can I make a reservation for a future stay at the lower rate even if I don't have enough points yet? (Looking at a big award stay later this year, but still a few points shy.)

2) Can I make a reservation for a future stay at the lower category if I don't have the cert yet? (I want to use my Visa cert sometime in August at a Cat 5 that is turning into a Cat 6, but I won't get the cert deposited into my account until June.)