I'll be curious to see what is happening with more Cat 5 hotels in particular. The NY and Paris charts suggest that a lot of current Cat 5s are going up to the 50K points level, which is quite a painful jump and devaluation. But those are also unusually expensive cities, and maybe some of those hotels were marginal being placed in SPG Cat 5 already. There are a lot of "nicest SPG hotel in town" places in cheaper cities like, say, the Nines in Portland. If those places also tend to jump up to 50K points, then the value for upper-mid-range properties is going to be pretty bad in general. What's happening in Mexico City looks more promising by contrast--the overpriced SPG Cat 6 St Regis is coming down to 50K while the appropriately priced Cat 5 W is remaining about the same, at 35K.

It's nice to see the Westins in NY coming down to 50K, which feels totally appropriate to me, but I had hoped perhaps more SPG Cat 6s would fall in price than seems to actually be the case. It will be interesting to see what happens with London, for example. To judge by NY I'd guess the Great Northern will fall to 50K and everything else will stay 60K or higher. Like NY that's not terribly attractive.

There will be some bargains at certain spots on the chart, but it feels like overall these new Marriott points are worth maybe like 0.6-0.7 cents each in general use, which is definitely less than Marriott points were often worth before. And even still some of the 60K points hotels are somewhat often available for less than $360-$420 per night.

This will even out somewhat for points earned on hotel stays thanks to the higher earning rate, but it's going to be nearly impossible to justify using an SPG/Marriott credit card for non-bonus spend.