Originally Posted by
eponymous_coward
It's a Hyatt Explorist->MGM Gold match. Frankly Explorist is a joke midlevel status, pretty comparable to Marriott Gold, below Hilton Gold. It's basically extra points and bottled water at checkin.
I have no idea what MGM and Marriott have planned but I don't think it's entirely unreasonable that MGM might give Gold at Marriott Platinum. A lot of people are not going to drop $650 for a credit card, and if they are, they aren't all Marriott FT "maximizers". Many of them are going to be people who might do 25 nights a year anayway.
Explorist benefits aren't very good, but it's still not not that easy to get. Requires 30 nights, only 5 come with having the Hyatt card (whereas you can get 15/25 with one or 30/40 with two Marriott cards). Hyatt had a promotion a few months ago with Bilt (Bylt?) that made it easier, but typically you can't avoid spending time in Hyatts to get that status. Moreover, Marriott has a much larger footprint, and presumably a much larger number of Bonvoy members in the US, so MGM would have many more elites with waived resort fees and lower room rates than they currently do if Platinums and above got MGM Gold. The fact that Marriott is classifying these resorts as Luxury/Autograph/Tribute properties makes me think it will look a lot like the relationship with Cosmopolitan.