Originally Posted by
escapefromphl
My understanding is the category assigned to a property is linked to the amount of points bookings. So Marriott's best values are in the areas where the least tourism occurs. A currency drop will make a points value less attractive so may lower the number of bookings, I suspect Zika has softened points bookings going forward. I noticed that no changes in South Africa even though their currency has been falling over the last year or so.
Category assignation is entirely so Marriott doesn't lose money on the difference between the revenue gained from sales of points given to customers and the cash reimbursement they have to make in USD to a property for that rewards stay (which is based on the trailing 12-month ADR performance of a property).
It may well be that they go further and look at the average revenue gained by Marriott for the points used at each property on a more individual property basis (e.g. the travellers who use 40k points in one continent may have a different per-point income to Marriott than 40k points earned and used in a different part of the world) and so make more adjustments based on that.
In the South African cases, even with a devalued currency, the equivalent USD room rate may have remained constant due to perhaps their guest mix and contracted rates.