The way the new TPs are written, they're baking in the assumption that you're redeeming at Peak values. It's still a pretty big devaluation, but it does not look like there will be two tiers of Travel Packages. Just one tier, if you hold a Cat 4, you can use it at a Peak Cat 4.

While I don't take a single phone call with a customer support rep as an "official" announcement, the way maxcalls describes it is honestly the single most straightforward and fair way to handle the conversion. Nobody gets screwed. In fact, we all get the benefit of being able to redeem at the entire SPG/Marriott footprint and I suspect a lot of us are going to get an expiration date bonus. With the 1-month blackout, they'll probably just err on the safe side and make all of the certs valid through September 2019. (Seems simpler than adding exact blackout days to the end of each individual certificate.)

I'm not worried. I'll have a new Cat 4 and enough points to upgrade it if I need to. I'll finally have a meaningful status at SPG hotels, and am looking forward to redeeming at a hotel I couldn't have redeemed a TP at in the past.