Hi--
I don't post here too often, but spend a lot of time "lurking". I have learned a lot for you folks, so thanks. I don't travel a heck of a lot, but over 5 or 6 years (maybe longer), I had accumulated about 550,000 Marriott Rewards Points. I had planned on converting these points in 2010 to multiple travel packages (2 270,000 point travel packages--w/ 7 nights in cat. 7 and 120K miles) so our family of four could take a trip to Paris as a graduation trip for when my kids got done with highschool in the summer of 2010). When I learned about this new program "enhancement" it was pretty clear to me that if I wanted to be able to do this trip, I would need to take it under the current points strucuture, as I would not be able to "afford" it with the way the points are to be devalued. There is no way I will travel enough to earn enough additional points between now and then to get the necessay extra points to make the trip in 2010. Ok--so that's fine--they changed the rules (as I am sure they are legally entilted to do), tbut atleast hey gave me enough notice to atleast try and use my points how I wanted to, albeit a year earlier than I wanted. I can live with that.

When I did the redemption, I ended up getting 4 tickets on AA using miles, and 2 rooms at the Renaissance Paris Hotel Le Parc Trocadero for 7 nights for dates that were acceptable to us. And to get this hotel, I had to move my dates around quite a bit to get a room under the standard award. Based on what I read here, I first tried to get a reservation at the Renaissance Paris Vendome Hotel but there were no standard awards available--the Paris Marriott Hotel Champs-Elysees was also unavailable for a standard award. A couple of thoughts--I thought by planning out almost 9 months that there would a lot more room availability--I was really suprrised how limitted it was under the standard award. I figured the airline awards would be the constraining factor--that turned out to be a non-issue--plenty of availability. Basically, under the current program, they seem to ration awards by limitting rooms. Under the new program, as I understand it, they will make more rooms available, but basically make them more expensive, so they are rationing them by cost/points. So I would think that for those of you folks who have lots of points but less flexibility, the new program would be a net positive. For people like me who have more flexibility and less points, the program change is a net negative.

One other thing I wondered--I noticed that all of these Paris hotels offered standard awards for "upgraded rooms"---e.g. you could redeem a standard award but also had to pay cash each night because the room they were making available was a "nicer" room. I wonder, when Marriott changes the program and gets rid of the stay anytime awards, if they are going to make sufficient rooms avaialable under the new award structure where you do not have to pay an upgrade fee. In other words, will you be able to get a room anytime you want, but only the "nicer" rooms will be available, and hence you will have to pay with points and money.