Originally Posted by
hockeyinsider
How do these properties get exempted?
My guess would be:
1. The hotel has been within the Marriott fold for a very long period of time dating to before Marriott merged all their various chain programs into the current Marriott Rewards. And the Marriott/hotel agreement didn't allow Marriott to change the rules on the hotel. Thus the hotel didn't have to offer free breakfast and Marriott couldn't easily force them to.
2. Marriott really wanted to have these particular hotels under its flag even though the hotel management (for whatever reasons they had) didn't want to provide free breakfast to Gold/Plat elites. Marriott decided it was worth having this hotel without forcing them to provide free breakfast and offering elites a different benefit instead (small amount of points.)
I'd guess if these exclusions were causing widespread movement away from Marriott Rewards in general or these hotels in specific, then we'd see the hotel start offering the free breakfast benefit. The fact that most haven't changed would leave me to conclude that it must not have much of a hit against Marriott's program or the hotel.