If you are referring to SPGs latest deval, while they didn't say which hotels would be affected, they did let everyone know that it was coming.

I think there are a couple of differences that have really caused issues with Marriott's more limited deval versus SPGs bigger one. First, Marriott gave no warning at all where SPG did. Second, Marriott gave the perception of playing games with us by waiting until after the Freddies voting where SPG did not.

Now with all that said, I'm not personally railing against Marriott because of this. I think it has been shown that Marriott traditionally changes its hotel categories around the beginning of every year and it shouldn't be a surprise to everyone here that they did it again this year and that most of the changes were an upward movement of hotels, that is normally what happens every year. Pinniped was correct in noting that Marriott's change effected far fewer hotels than SPGs and there was no new creation of award levels as there was for SPG. I personally see the change this year as a normal yearly update and that is why there was no prior notice. I will also agree that while SPG DID notify the public that the changes were coming, they WOULD not tell the public what hotels were going to be affected. In fact, if I remember posts correctly, they went so far as to tie Starwood_Lurker's hands in even talking about it which is something they had never done before.

Before that deval, I had started to make SPG my second choice of hotels behind Marriotts. Because of it, I've started looking at Hilton instead as a 2nd choice. Next year after another round of devals, I may change yet again, but I'll just have to wait and see.