Have you ever read the SPG Terms and Conditions? Section 13 has your answers. I've copied and pasted a portion of Section 13 that should answer all questions:
13. OTHER PRINCIPLES
13.1 Modification of the SPG Program. Starwood may change the SPG Program and the SPG Program Terms at any time, for any reason and without notice. Starwood may make changes that affect, without limitation, processes, benefits, amenities, elite levels, rules for earning and redeeming Starpoints, Starpoint redemption levels, rules for the use of SPG Awards, availability of SPG Awards, SPG Award inventory, SPG Award types, availability of SPG Promotion Rewards, and benefits of Elite Preferred Guest Membership Status, SPG Lifetime Gold Status and SPG Lifetime Platinum Status.
My comments:
Starwood was bought by Marriott. At some time in the future, Starwood will no longer exist. When (or sometime before) Starwood no longer exists, the Starwood Preferred Guest program will no longer exist.
What happens to your lifetime status? Marriott is under
no obligation to honor your SPG lifetime status. However, I see two possible outcomes.
1) Marriott could convert SPG LT Gold to MR LT Silver and SPG LT Plat to MR LT Gold. and/or
2) (I expect this) Marriott could take each member's SPG history and convert it over to Marriott's system. Your stay history since at least 1999 is in SPG's records so all of that can be converted over to the MR program.
Breaking it down:
Stays - should convert 1:1 on paid stays.
Cash and Points stays may or may not convert; my money's on them not converting. Award stays probably won't convert because they don't count toward lifetime or annual status in Marriott's system. Marriott just started counting award stays toward annual/LT status.
Points - should convert at whatever ratio is chosen on the cutover. Say the conversion is 1 Starpoint = 3 MR points. I'd expect Marriott to apply that same formula to your lifetime point accumulation. Example: if you've accrued 400,000 Starpoints over the course of your membership (doesn't matter if you've already used them), that would be 1.2 million MR points toward lifetime status.
Previously achieved status level for LT status - Part of MR's program is that in order to be LT Plat, you have to have obtained Plat at least once during your membership. I'd expect them to use the combined annual MR and SPG nights to come up with this number. If MR requires this, I recommend those that will fall short of 75 to get a MR Premier Visa so you can get 15 nights annually + 1 night/$3K spend. You can also consider doing this to get stay credit very quickly:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...-required.html