Originally Posted by
hockeyinsider
It's gone. Officially.
I sent an email complaining to Arne Sorenson that the "new" changes haven't been revealed, which is deeply unfair to legit event planners with contracts on the books. I also complained that if the rumored changes and marketing materials indicating the 10 elite-qualifying nights was going away then it would be a negative change. Between my colleague and I, we do $400,000 a year with Marriott.
A "corporate liaison" from Marriott called me. She first said all the current contracts would be honored by the old program. Then when I read the FAQs, which say current contracts will be credited based on the new program, she said she was wrong and the FAQs were correct. She confirmed the new Rewarding Events would only credit 10 nights for the first event and 1 night for every 20 room nights. I complained that this penalizes big spenders who do banquets and non-room events. She said road warriors who spend 300 nights per year complained that people who never stay in hotels are getting status. I said if that was the case then people who do banquets shouldn't get any Marriott points. Apparently, the new program will give points for food-and-beverage spending which SPG Pro didn't do. I said that kind of contradicts her justification of the change. She then said she used a bad analogy. I said I understood that Marriott wanted the new program to move toward a revenue model, but penalizing big-spending customers for legit events is bad business. I also told her my colleague and I will reconsider our events business with Marriott after August 1. She said she would relay my further complaints, but I could definitely tell Marriott doesn't care even though it's obvious they haven't fully thought the Rewarding Events component out.
I think that MR probably sees it as the lesser of two evils. A wedding or similar event can easily cost quite a bit in a larger room, an initial bonus plus some room related booking bonus helps. The majority of people booking tens or hundreds of thousands in events are also probably checking properties and locations on price sensitivity and not just blindly signing for the elite nights. Plus, if your $100K meetings are worth the same 10 bonus nights as someone's $50 no-show meeting on every meeting, doesn't that feel like it undermines your spend? And the rep pointed out correctly that you get a heap of MR points for your spend that most of us can only dream of.
If you are really taking
that much business to MR, you should probably physically write (it's surprising how much non-bulk snail-mail from real people gets these days) to Arne Sorenson about how other programs reward your meeting spend better and how much you've spent. They might tell you to pound sand, but they might reconsider the decision (either on the whole, or more likely, on an individual exception basis.)
A program that rewards $50 and $100,000 meetings the same is incongruent though. You could say the same about the legacy MR program, but there were no SNAs or anything like that and for the overwhelming majority of people, the lack of points on cheap meetings for lifetime qualification put a damper on generally using meetings other than one to hit the next level.