I'll use the latest Marriott one as a case in point, but the same is true of the MegaBonus or Hyatt's Faster Free Nights or whatever.

You get 10,000 bonus points after every 3rd stay. From reading the majority of the posts on the thread here, people appear to fall into one of three camps:

- Happy, because they've already got stays booked and now they get free bonus points.
- Happy, because they've got long stays booked that they're now going to split into multiple short stays to earn free bonus points.
- Upset, because they've got long stays booked that they don't want to split into multiple short stays so they feel screwed on the bonus points.

In none of those situations do I see Marriott getting any benefit whatsoever. I can see two situations that they think they are encouraging, whether or not its true:

- People who book one more Marriott stay than they would have otherwise, because they've got two and the next one gets them the bonus.
- People who book on Marriott over the summer instead of the competition so that they can get the bonus points.

I guess I can see the first case, but don't think there are really all that many people in that situation. But I don't see droves of people flocking to Marriott to book multiple stays, canceling their Hilton/Hyatt/Starwood reservations in order to get a measly 10K points. Not that 10K points are anything to sneeze at (particularly if you're getting them for free like most of our posters seem to be without any additional effort), but they're not so dramatic that people are going to switch loyalty for life.

Is the hotel business so competitive that those few guests they steal from the competition really do make up for all the extra points they're giving away to the rest of us?