There are other more important factors for meeting planners to consider - like meeting room size needed , facilities, pricing, amenities, client preference. The points and nights is lower on the consideration list. Hotel coordinators also have soft skills they deploy from a birthday card on your birthday, fruit basket during X'mas, chocolate basket during easter to tickets to a local sports game..etc that can send to your department office that is far more influential and effective than some nights and points.

Sounds like you are describing a hotel function like the Sales Department. Rewarding Events is for members that schedule events at properties, either for themselves or their company. RE was established to encourage them to choose Marriott properties for the perks, just like us road warriors out there doing real live stays.

I wouldn't say that a $50.00 4:00 am 1 hour meeting for a no-show is really a win-win.

James

It's totally possible some hotels Event Coordinator have something to do with sales - I have no idea. I am just describing a range of things happened that builds relationship between a hotel and one of their corporate customers.

My point was just there is the core product - meeting room size, food options, location...etc etc that are most important factors. Then when those satisfy your minimum requirements, then you look into secondary factors like pricing and hotel staff's promotional skills and how stress-free the transaction is for Accounts Payable. (like if you're acct depart tells you avoid xxx hotel like a plague, you won't use them unless there are no alternatives). All the niceties of cards, gifts allows staff to keep the hotel in mind. Only after a hotel's core product is sufficient for needs, then Rewarding Events is among many ways to attract business (they only need to submit a portion of revenue to Marriott Corp).

That's absolutely not a win-win. Especially if you call the Marriott franchisee hotel hotline and they keep insisting to use Group Posting Tools, the meeting has to happen - like people showing up. Or in my case, insisted Group Posting Tools require rooms in addition to booking conference rooms.

I know there were previous discussions on pre-Aug 18 terms and conditions that do not require rooms booked. Just keep imaging and work with me.

Say you're the hotel Event Coordinator and you call the Marriott Corp Franchisee support hotline. 90 minutes later they have a rep. Then they transfer you to the Marketing and Revenue Management department and you ask them of Rewarding Events and how to work and under no uncertain terms, they say you need hotel rooms in addition to meeting rooms. You drop down the name of the staff from Corporate Marriott and notes on the date & time ofconversation. So now you have a customer that wants to book a 1 hour meeting at $100 (with a possibility of a no-show) and insisted on some term & conditions and reference Flyertalk.

Are you going to put your career in risk on helping this customer and trust him over what Marriott Corp rep says? What will my accounting department say if a charge this person's credit card and he/she didn't show up at all? Do we have case if the customer dispute the charge with the credit card - what if it's a scam credit card? If the person is a no-show, what if Marriott cracks down by an audit - should I lie or should we tell our staff to lie? We might get risk in getting penalized or kicked out of the franchise... Geez. I don't even get any bonus for a small $100 meeting and it's a dip in our 10,000 meeting goal.

Conclude: Better not risk it. Tell the customer to go somewhere else.

But $50 for 10 night credit is equivalent to $5/night rooms which I doubt you will find anywhere. And if those 10 nights puts you over the next tier in time for an upcoming stay where paying to upgrade to a club room could cost you $50 is a win. And I'd bet if you book the room with no F&B or AV requirements, the property will not put more than five minutes effort into the booking, that could be a win too. It is a way to pay for status, which I am against, but that's how the rules read for now.

Quick data point: a couple of my meetings (pre-08/18) have posted today, and no EQN has been awarded, so I guess that corroborates the point that only the first meeting gets 10 EQNs (likely 'st meeting ever).

Now, whether I'll be able to get those EQNs posted per the old T&Cs is a different story...

There is a lot of clean up that still needs to happen so don't bow out yet. Any meetings held before 8/18 should post as specified. Some have been able to get confirmation that meetings booked before 8/18 will get the nights. AND, as I read the T&Cs that's 10 nights per contract, which has been the case all along. We will have to wait and see.

I agree, and am hoping that's a case of botched IT... the confirmation mentions I am getting EQNs (althought none posted).

PROPERTY NAME: CY XXX

EVENT DATES: 08/16/2018 - 08/16/2018

REFERENCE NUMBER: XXX

DATE POSTED: 08/19/2018

BASE POINTS EARNED: 125
ELITE POINTS EARNED: 94
PURCHASED BONUS POINTS: 0
PURCHASED DOUBLE & TRIPLE POINTS: 0
TOTAL EARNED & PURCHASED POINTS: 219
ELITE QUALIFYING NIGHTS:

This meeting or event will count toward your qualification for Elite membership.

Remember, the nights come from MR after the event is posted by the property. I'm sure it's queued up somewhere until they are ready to process the data. Hang in there and give them time to get everything in place. If you don't see the nights after two weeks, give them a call.

To emphasize, it's probably going to be a minimum of a week, because:

1. Someone has to hold an event under Rewarding Events post 08/18
2. It has to post with Group Posting Tool
3. They have to confirm whether or not it was the second meeting within the year/after 08/18 and if it posted 10 nights or not.
4. They have to confirm whether or not this was intended behavior by Marriott or a bug;
5. They have to post about all of this either here or elsewhere on the publicly visible internet.

I had 6 meetings, 2 each on 8/8, 8/9, and 8/10. This morning I got the 6 emails about them being posted on the GPT and only 1 of the six emails listed 10 elite qualifying nights. All 5 other emails left the EQN section blank, but do have the "This meeting or event will count toward your qualification for Elite membership" text at the bottom.

It doesn't seem likely that the EQN will automatically post, hopefully it isn't too much of a fight to get them posted since I did the meetings pre-T&C change.

It's starting to sound like the "cynical" read of the T&C (that the first meeting either ever or within a program year gets the 10 nights, all subsequent meetings don't provide nights automatically, only 1 EQN for every 20 related room nights, up to 20 EQNs per meeting) is the correct one.

Let us know if you can get the posting corrected for the pre-08/18 meetings to get the 10 EQNs.

It might be too early to jump to that conclusion. As we know there is a lot of clean up that needs to be done with the accounts, combined or not. I would expect them to block transactions until they get the base data worked out. Some have been reporting CC posts not happening since the beginning of the month. There will be many exceptions in the beginning and they will get it stabilized at some point with us having to point missed items. IF the meeting was held before the 18th, then absolutely nights should be issued. Some have received assurances that even events occuring after the 18th will get the nights. I still maintain the benefit is per contract as stated in the T&C's, but we will have to wait and see what they do.

Go to marriott.co.uk or marriott.com.au, and you will see they already posted.