This is clearly terrible news for all those involved and while I know many had poor experiences with Marriott's version of Ambassador I have always been fortunate to have had great service. What seems telling is that Ambassadors were essentially Marriotts best customer service representatives and I guess as such their best paid, but there is no attempt to keep these people who are the best at their jobs and remove less experienced and able people, it is very much a cost cutting exercise which suggests it will only go one way in regards service for Marriott's most frequent guests. That to me seems a very short sighted move, specially as they have essentially made sure all Ambassador guests have the status until the end of 2021 with the possibility of a few more people getting the status this year by gifting so many nights.

It seems all but impossible for Marriott to run the Ambassador program how they were doijg with so many layoffs as Ambassadors were already saying they had to many guests to manage and now will have even more, albeit a lot quieter short term. So unless Marriott plan on having another tier above Ambassador there are going to be some very valuable customers suddenly getting very poor service and at a time when you need to get people staying at your hotels this seems like a terrible move! Maybe Marriott have a master plan on how to retan these very top Ambassador customers who are still travelling while placating the rest, but from what I have witnessed from Marriott in the past 3 years its highly unlikely!

As for the suggestion Marriott IT may pickup some of the slack, thats a scary scary thought!