Originally Posted by
nexusCFX
I doubt that will be the case. Marriott is not going to maintain forever that the travel packages only work at pre-merger Marriott/RC hotels, given that the program will have unified branding in 2019. It's simply a current IT limitation.
We are in the "Show Me" situation. So far only the worst fears have come true, on all fronts, not just the TPs.
Comparing to the mess on TPs, the losing point balances when combining accounts is affecting many. That has gotten lots of attention and escalation while it is dead silence on TP, including no blogger would pick up the issues except just a little write up by OMAAT which quickly died once the new credit cards are introduced and the push for the cards becomes full force.
I would venture to say, UNTIL we no longer need to be redirect to SPG site to use the legacy SPG booking platform, the chance of being able to attach the cert to SPG properties remains NIL.
Once we are able to book SPG properties the same way as Marriott properties, using the Marriott booking platform, then yes, the cert would become applicable to the SPG properties. We would be very lucky to see such happening before the end of this year.
Dont forget we still do NOT have a name of the merged program! That would not be announced until early 2019. No ETA.
Given the myriad of issues on this mid year merger that came out of the blue when Marriott had been telling investors that the actual merger would not happen in 2018 after postponing the projection time a couple times, then all of a sudden news leaked from China in late March they were working on getting rid of SPG platform in August, that forced Marriott to make announcement in April of the Mid Year Aug 1st merger, it cannot be ruled out that there are some greater forces behind the rush to do the merger of systems when nothing is really ready to do so. Of course Marriott will never tell you any truth of this odd Mid Year merger that creates tons of challenge on the night counts, LT status etc etc to just name the most basics, when a year end or beginning of the year merger would make much more sense.