Originally Posted by
VA1379
Marriott Concierge
1. Allow us to book travel packages and use them for future reservations. Yes, it is a one time hit for Marriott, but it would lessen the anger over the changes.
2. Let us book a travel package for 5 night stays as well as 7 nights. I think this would be a nice choice, especially for the higher category properties.
I have a bit of good news for you. Travel packages and hopper rewards ordered prior to January 15th can be used for reward stays booked on or after the 15th. If you call Guest Services on January 14th, (it may be a little busy if you all decide to do this) and order as many travel packages as you have points for, the mileage will be transferred to the airline you chose and you will have twelve months from the date of issuance to use the hotel portions.
Regarding the creation of five night travel package reward, I have sent your suggestions on and will keep you informed on what I find out.
Originally Posted by
sziv50
Marriott Concierge - can you address what will be done to protect against hotels manipulating their inventory to reduce the number of standard rooms. This is the same exact problem that existed with the Stay Anytime awards. All a property had to do was change the room type to "Deluxe" or some other room that is almost identical to the "Standard Room" to get around the requirement to offer the room as Stay Anytime. I don't see how this will change with the current program. In fact, now a hotel has even more incentive to re-classify it's rooms and reduce the number of standard rooms available.
This is a good question. Without mentioning specifics, (mostly because I don’t have that many of them regarding policing the changes on the hotels side) I can say that I have seen the training that was sent to the hotels and what they are required to do is very clear. One advantage to the new system is hotels will be reimbursed for redemption stays at a much higher rate than they used to, so there really is very little incentive for them to try and cheat the system.
Ira