The conversion rate was dead on...if you look at many of the reputable bloggers' points values ahead of the announcement, they had MR at .7-.8 and SPG at 2.2-2.4, so a 1:3 rate is pretty dead on.
When the new 15 tier award chart (my prediction
) is announced, you will see some massive inflation w/many of the big city Category 9 JWMs moving up, as that's where there was some great arbitrage (i.e., spending 15K SPG points for the nice London Marriott properties vs. 20K-25K for the SPG ones)
Originally Posted by
EricH
If the category changes have any relation to the merger, maybe it says that more SPG customers are staying at Marriott properties than MR customers are staying at Starwood properties.
There's a whole thread for this (and no need to re-hash), but it was shown in a few different ways that it was actually going the opposite direction.