Based on some vague info handed out by Marriott reps, there is speculation that Marriott will only hand out the valuable 50 and 75 night benefits (suite night awards and free night certs) to members who cross the threshold after the program merger. Meaning if you already had 75+ Marriott nights before the merger happened, you’d get nothing, but you’d get the benefits if you had 49 or 74 nights and then hit the status afterwards.

This lead to the bizarre discussion about people purposefully cancelling Marriott bookings before the merger. Marriott could have simply clarified the issue in the massive list of FAQs compiled by the Starwood lurker, but did not do so, and in fact added fuel to the fire by not denying that this will occur.

Not rewarding the members who didn’t cancel bookings and already attained 50 or 75 Marriott nights would be patently absurd, for that the OP is right. Can’t really call it a loyalty program if it’s operating in reverse.

Most importantly, the benefits chart released months ago has no asterisk on it, and clearly states that platinum/premier members receive these benefits, without any fine print to the contrary about needing the 50th or 75th night to occur after August 18th. I made my choice to push for plat premier status based on that public info and attractive benefit, as did others.

I cannot see a situation where Marriott won’t make this right. If they don’t, this will truly be a reason to get extremely upset, far more so than the TPs, which I agree are a mess in their own right. There is no rational argument here for Marriott to do anything but provide the listed benefits to their most loyal customers.