Originally Posted by
craigthemif
You pay the hotel. The hotel pays its franchise or management fee to Marriott later.
The main transaction where Marriott pays the hotel is award nights, in which case you don't earn "base points".
Yes that is obvious ... what I meant is that some genius at MAR IT launched a version of production that translates award nights as a cash value depending on what MAR paid the Hotel ... in whatever case I got 1K points on an award stay (541 Base + 406 Elite + 1,000 Extra) that I shouldn't have been awarded.