Originally Posted by
jsloan
Now, this could be a cherry-picked set of hotels intending to make the program look as good as possible... or it could be that this isn't actually a massive devaluation, but merely the realignment of ~20 categories into 8.
It's spin to make it look good. And what's to stop any of the hotels that dropped a category in the sample from increasing a category in 2020?
The J.W. Marriott Hotel in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic is hardly illustrative. I'd guess that 90% of folks redeeming points in the Dominican Republic go to a beach property, not a city center hotel in the capital. So yes, it's dropping a category but it's not truly illustrative. A better example would have better properties in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including the Marriott on St. Thomas, supposedly the number one property for points redemption by Marriott's American customers.
And, of course, releasing an "illustrative" example that shows two resort hotels in Puerto Rico dropping a category is designed to make the changes look good since Puerto Rico's tourism was wiped out. I'm actually surprised that these hotels didn't drop even further.
Even some of the Mexican hotels dropping a category isn't a surprise, given all the violent crime and travel cautions.