Originally Posted by bgriff

Curious what kind of redemption patterns have led to 3 cents a point. I am judicious with my Starpoints but I've rarely achieved that level of value -- maybe occasionally for stays on super-peak dates, or for random lower-end properties (the Le Meridien Angkor Wat is offering me a good value on a trip later this year for example, although it is also going up in price in the new award chart).

Personally I went through and mapped out hotels in a range of destinations that I'm planning or considering for travel in the next 18 months and most values were in the 0.5-0.8 cents per point territory. There were a few of 1 cent or more, though most of those were thanks to the discount on cat 8 awards for Aug-Dec 2018, and boosted by the short-term lack of peak award pricing. Plus unlike SPG, Marriott does not have the rule of "if a standard room is on sale it must be available using points" (Marriott merely has "no blackout dates", so there has to be at least one award room every night, but not "no capacity controls") so I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see very limited availability to use points in Hawaii over Christmas break and in other situations that would have represented particularly good SPG values.

I haven't decided yet what my breakage point will be for using Marriott points ... I always used a threshold of 2cpm for SPG.