Originally Posted by
Adelphos
I’m not sure why people were surprised or hoping for anything more. Think about it from the hotel owners standpoint - which is MGM (or technically not given they lease the property now, but for this purpose, the same difference). MGM generates a lot of revenues from parking fees, resort fee, dining and the like. A bunch of Hyatt elites were likely staying and not paying fees, not gambling much, etc.
That's all conjecture and guessing at this point. Casinos know very well that you get ANYBODY into their hotel, there's an 80% chance they're going to gamble. Even gambling a little bit will offset the parking/resort fees. On top of that, Hyatt Elites were often booking rooms at times where these rooms were going to go empty anyway (and A LOT of times, the rooms were literally empty because they were simply doing it for mattress runs) . It was a win-win for MGM.
With this program, many more Marriott elites will be staying at MGM (because there are many more Marriott elites), but they will be paying resort fees, so MGM gets more money (regardless of whether they gamble). Those Marriott elites also get points when they were not getting them before. All the stuff about breakfast, loyalty benefits, etc is irrelevant. From a MGM perspective, they are swapping out fewer, less profitable customers (Hyatt) for a greater number of more profitable customers (Marriott). From an Marriott elite perspective, elites can now earn points on stays they may have been making already.
Not really. Most Marriott elites are saavy. They aren't going to pay $30-50 more to book on a Marriott channel (and miss out on the 15-30% MGM Rewards Member booking deal) just to earn points or elite nights. MGM was using the Cosmo data to determine how many Marriott elites they were going to get. This is incredibly erroneous way to guestimate the potential benefit to using Marriott as their partner in so many regards (Cosmo is and was a unique property...the rest of the MGM property group does not compare - not even the Bellagio). Marriott Elites are going to be booking at the Grand Chateau more often than not before they go after ANY MGM property. There's little to no benefit for me to go to MGM when I can get a quiet, clean. and spacious Marriott property on the strip at a cost that's the same or less than an MGM property.
From a Marriott perspective, they get a kickback from MGM. The partnership is built for those that travel to Vegas for work and who want to earn and redeem points - nothing else matters.
Disagree wholeheartedly. Considering most work trips/conventions are booking through other channels than Marriott's site (whether it through MGM directly or even through Concur), none of these work people will be earning points. Concur bookings will most likely show up as if they were booked directly through MGM, so they'll earn MGM tier points but not Marriott Bonvoy points.
The ONLY Marriott customers that are going to come out ahead are those that participate in the MMP rates (Employees/Family Members of Employees). They'll get a heavily discounted rate that will make stomaching the fees more palatable, while earning elite credit. That's it. Everybody else is losing out here.
This whole arrangement is very misguided on both MGM and Marriotts part, and I dont believe MGM is going to find that $78 million benefit that they keep quoting. I'd estimate it's going to be about 1/4 of that, if anything.