hockeyinsider

As a legit events planner, I've sent a long email to the account executive and sales manager at properties and Marriott's central offices (about 30 people total) that I've dealt with over the years.

I've made it clear to them that I am no longer going to automatically do events and meetings at Marriott branded properties because there are zero incentives to do so. Getting rid of the 10 elite-qualifying nights is one thing, but not counting my $250,000 a year in spending, or even a fraction of it, toward the ambassador threshold is an insult.

UA-NYC

It's not so much that "we" are siding with Marriott - it's more that we aren't siding with a rude, insulting poster

dsquared37

So it boils down to spite? Really?

UA-NYC

Again - you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Said poster isn't doing much to engender sympathy.

Keyser

i agree....i am of the opinion that the op should get the elite nights credit as that is what marriott had promised & had been delivering on for years but the op's posts make it difficult to have any sympathy for him/her....

dsquared37

I fully agree with this notion.

mingzie

Keep in mind its all of you who started insulting and attacking me first, and not the other way around

I've been belittled since starting my thread, yet when I say anything back it is my fault?

Its hard to stay calm when people start telling you how much you don't deserve what you paid for and you're getting your account terminated, over non factual information such as why events without catering or AV are not considered meetings or people who stayed x amount of nights are better people than you and deserve faster answers or Bob spent more money than you you're a fake Plat, all the whilst telling you they'd be happy for Marriott to ban you and that it is right for Marriott not to give the nights and that Marriott can do whatever they want and change the terms and conditions and take anything from you they want. Oh, then you got the people harping on about how I took up a week of a hotels time despite the hotel MORE THAN HAPPY to do the meeting and booking for me and officially posting the meeting through the Group Posting Tool whilst using almost none of the hotels resources and booking through the official channels and paying the full amount over a supposed CRITICAL 'loophole' (ha - that is why I put the word loophole in quotes) that Marriott allowed to happen for 8 years.

When you've got 50 replies like that with no respect given whatsoever, I'm telling you, its hard to be respectful back. This whole discussion has been completely devoid of logic and people just slinging mud.

I do not expect a refund for the meetings, IF Marriott makes good on the 10 EQN. 10 EQN would cost even more to achieve at the moment than just refunding the meeting costs to be honest. IF Marriott refuses to make good on the EQN for all of us. YES I EXPECT an equivalent refund or compensation

Imagine you started a FlyerTalk thread and all you got was people making up lies and giving useless arguments and siding with Marriott, despite Marriott clearly being in the wrong with almost all of its members regarding this issue.

Just because you don't know me and its online doesn't mean you have the right to treat me like trash. I paid my hard earned money to Marriott, and would love to continue to do so if only they right their wrongs. I do not want to hear about how DYKWIA you are and how you spend $50,000 on your meetings and slept in beds for 700 nights and how much better you are than me, which is what I am getting in response.

How about we make things respectful from now on, and drop the patronising and completely irrelevant comments. This is not directed at you in particular - I'm honestly trying my hardest to make things respectful.

Imagine from my point of view though, the entire first page of my thread was people arguing that meetings without catering or AV are not real meetings and bashing me with snide comments. Would you maintain your cool in that situation?

This is UA-NYC's first post in my thread, in fact he posted this in two separate threads stalking me.

And calling me a rude, insulting poster - does anyone not see the irony?

​​​​​​​oh pshaw..

cruisr

phltraveler

If anyone has proof to the contrary (I've never had a meeting at Marriott thus I've never had contract text) please let me know, but my understanding is that the contracts for meetings did not explicitly promise the ten nights, but instead to award for the meeting under rewarding events terms.

In turn, the pre-08/18 MR T&C did not explicitly reference rewarding events benefits. It was just on the FAQ on the Rewarding Events page of Marriott.com (old FAQ page still on Marriott.com here, archived copy if they remove it here). When you add that to the 7-10 business day for processing the meeting as a Rewarding Event, language terms that points/miles (without explicit reference of nights) are awarded under the T&C at time of award, and that the other poster (mingzie) had the meetings less than 10 business days before the 08/18 program changes - it doesn't necessarily bode well for getting awarded the nights. Especially when pre and post 08/18 MR T&Cs give Marriott wide latitude to close accounts for what they consider abusive/fraudulent behavior (which MR might consider no-show meetings for nights to be). For the record, I'm in favor of the other poster getting the 10 EQN per meeting for the pre-08/18 events - I'm just not sure I would advise the poster to make a big stink about it to Marriott when it could have unintended consequences. (Archived copy of the old MR T&C here).

I think they do care about giving away status, hence the new program making it harder to earn status in several ways:

1. The addition of the "years at X level or higher" requirement for the lifetime years, making very high activity years (100+ nights) not offset lower activity years (less than 10/25/50 nights)
2. Elimination of the 1 EQN per $3,000 spent on the new Chase MR Visa, and the devaluation of the cert on the old MR visa to encourage people to upgrade
3. Capping the credit card nights earned to 15 EQNs per year from either the Marriott Visa or SPG Amex (no double dipping if you have both)
4. The apparent credit of 10 EQNs per meeting being reduced to 10 EQNs for the first meeting (unknown if first ever or first per program year; disputed language by some who think it is still 10 EQNs per contract and this behavior is an IT bug)
5. Elimination of stay based qualification (SPG had, MR did not)
6. Elimination of EQN credit for multiple rooms (SPG permitted EQN credit for up to three rooms at once, MR policy of only the one room member was staying in prevailed)
7. Reducing the value of status matched via credit card (e.g. Amex Plat) of SPG Gold down to Gold tier which no longer gives free breakfast, lounge access. Same for airline status match (UA Gold used to Map to MR Gold with lounge access and breakfast, the 50 night level; now UA Gold and higher will map to the new MR Gold [25 night level] which provides neither of these.
8. Elimination of rollover nights, which allowed elites to double dip nights by counting them once in the year they were earned, and a second time in the year they were rolled over to.

These changes reflect a merged Marriott that wants it to be harder to get (and "buy") status outright.

It was a loophole like some of the others that was long open and not often used. Before the 08/18 program changes, there was less of an urge to buy up to current status (no 50/75 night milestone awards) and Rewarding Events meeting nights were largely unattractive for lifetime status (because of the 1.2m/1.6m/2.0m lifetime points requirements, and the fact that meetings generally awarded Marriott points at a poor rate compared to stays (3pts per dollar spent vs. 10-20 points [10 points for most brands + 50% old MR plat bonus + 5 points per dollar from old Chase card, plus the fact that each meeting gave 10 nights]), requiring higher average rates for rooms to hit the points if you bought nights via Rewarding Events).

Marriott closed many of these loopholes thoughtfully throughout the merger process. Particularly for lifetime, a busier elite could start the year with more than 75 nights via rollover, and then stay 100+ nights. Then those 100+ nights in excess of the first 75 would rollover again and count a second time. MR realized after starting the merger with starwood (announcing it, but still running MR & SPG programs separately) that this was unusually generous and killed rollover nights.
EDIT: Strikethrough of erroneous statement. The formula was year night total - last year's rollover minus qualification tier (75 nights for plat). Thanks to @MSPeconomist for pointing out the inaccuracy. Rollover nights did count twice once the threshold for the member's status was passed (75 nights for plat).

MR does not want the cheap buy-up of status anymore, hence the raising of lounge/breakfast access (50 night level) from UA elite/credit card (Amex plat) status match being reduced to the 25 night level. In particular, cheap meetings purchasing the EQNs could in fact cost Marriott money, particularly if the member took the SNAs and got cheaper meetings. This changed the equation.

Now to outright "buy" status at 50 night level (lounge/breakfast) without actual stay actiivty under the post 08/18 program(for people eligible for the credit card) would be
1) Ritz Carlton Visa ($450 annual fee), move $75K spending across it to get Platinum (50 night)
2) Have the old Chase visa (no longer available for new signups, $95), get the 15 nights for having the card, use the award night (1 EQN), buy a Rewarding event (nominally $100 for the first meeting), and then "buy" status by moving remaining 24 nights at $3,000 credit card spend each = $72,000 in spend (about $72,195 adding up AF, meeting cost, and spend)

Still "buying" status, but a far cry from the old status quo of the pre 08/18 FT thread 8 meetings and $800 for platinum, no stays required.

My understanding is contracts even pre-08/18 did not mention the nights or points, just that the meeting would post under Rewarding Events. The dicier part is that the terms on Marriott.com pre-08/18 said meetings took 7-10 business days to post (requiring members to hold meetings before August 4th to fall under the old terms of up to 10 business days, to post by 08/17) and generally reference awards under the loyalty program as being whatever is in effect the time the award is made.

Marriott had a lot of "loophole" practices for years, including the fact that rollover nights counted twice (once in the year they were earned, and a second time in the year they were rolled over to. They reduced a lot of other avenues for cheap/free nights (see earlier in this very post in my reply to geminidreams). Them waiting to close the Rewarding Events on 08/18 is likely correlated to the required IT changes to the GPT/rewards program, along with the new lifetime criteria eliminating points (meaning any night, regardless of method or cost of acquisition, is now equal for qualification), which made free/cheap nights a lot more appealing to rack up (also, addiiton of 50/75 night choice awards for current status).

I feel like you may be taking some of the replies a tad personally. I don't think other posters are "out to get you", and my references to potential account termination are not because I want another elite out of the pool. On the contrary, I have sympathy for your plight, but I'm not sure that advancing this point to Marriott as someone with no stay activity and, as other posters have pointed out, your low revenue/high effort purchased nights is necessarily a great idea. You are better off waiting to see if MR fixes this as an IT issue in a sweep, or if there is precedent of someone else with higher revenue meetings or actual butt-in-bed activity in addition to meeting bookings getting pre-08/18 events corrected.

A point that other posters have asked, and I may have missed the point, is that the Rewarding Events language awards you for holding a meeting. A meeting defined is an assembly of people. If you paid for the meeting room, and the property provided a clean, empty room available for use, Marriott may interpret your bookings as ineligible or your activity as potentially fraudulent/abusive if they were no-shows. Did you actually show up to the meetings? Some posters may take issue of whether or not you "deserve" the nights if they were no-show meetings (personally I think as long as you paid, you should get credited), but the language of the MR T&C both pre-08/18 and post-08/18 gives them pretty wide latitude in closing accounts. And I could very easily see Marriott deeming holding 8 no-show meetings (if they were indeed no-show meetings) to buy the nights as an "abuse" of the loyalty program.

We're not trying to take anything away from you. We aren't Marriott employees. We can't control whether or not Marriott decides to award you the EQNs for your pre-08/18 meetings. We're just warning you that trying to escalate the issue among Marriott management may indeed backfire worse than just going to "wait and see".

swintec

Sure, but ive asked you two or three times at this point if you could post the official communication from marriott themselves that you would earn more than 10 nights after the merger date and you have simply ignored it...that's disrespectful dont ya think? You even said you would in your first post for those who asked. Where is it?

Finkface

And I have asked three times if you and your one other person ever actually showed up at the hotel for these 8 ‘meetings’ between Aug 7-17. You refuse to answer this. Disrespectful, no? Which in itself probably gives us the answer, and you wonder why people are not on your side? You want 80 nights credit for ‘meetings’ you never actaully held. Just like someone wanting credit flights they never took or a night they never stayed. While it may or may not be technically written that way, it is hard to sympathisze with someone so blatently gaming the system. Someone who has never set foot in a Marriott even once.

bhrubin

I have never booked a meeting--fake or otherwise. Your claim is disingenuous and dead wrong.

I did inquire post-Aug 18 from my Ambassador about whether or not I could book a meeting--since I've never before booked any Marriott meeting; I was told any meeting I booked would not qualify post-Aug 18 for 10 elite nights. Apparently, my actual group events with 10+ rooms in the spring of 2018 already had counted as "meetings" despite my never having booked any actual meeting at any Marriott hotel.

I had learned after the Aug 18 merged systems that I was a mere 15 legacy Marriott nights away from Marriott Platinum for 2018, which would qualify as my 10th total year of Platinum under the new terms and thereby grant me Lifetime Platinum Premier status in 2019. That is true.

It wasn't remotely hypocritical or unethical for me to ask my Ambassador whether my first ever meeting might qualify for 10 elite nights towards the 15 I just discovered I needed. I have stayed many times at Marriott properties in 2018, and I have booked groups of 10+ rooms at many Marriott properties in 2018. Yet I had never had any meeting with a 1 meeting room for the easy 10 elite nights. I still haven't.

So I have not booked any meeting. I never have booked a single meeting. You are dead wrong.

Even if I had been able to book a meeting for the first 10 elite nights, that would have been my first meeting ever. And I still only would have qualified for that first meeting for the 10 elite nights. No more. No more like you're trying to do.

You are trying to game the system. I am not.

I am not doing anything fraudulent or unethical to reach my 10th Platinum year. I did nothing fraudulent or unethical when I asked about my first ever meeting and whether or not it might earn me 10 elite nights. I would have done nothing fraudulent or unethical even if I had been able to book my first ever "fake" meeting and earn my first ever 10 elite nights for such.

That isn't what you're doing at all. My actions are not remotely akin to yours.

I doubt very much that that's what you were thinking. I'm not your red herring.

MSPeconomist

phltraveler

EDIT: Mea culpa:

I'm not sure if there were any bugs in rollover, as I'm not quite sure how I had any nights rolled over from 2016 to 2017 in that case (I definitely did have nights roll over, about 30)... Marriott does not expose prior year totals by night type.

Keyser

if you go through this thread then you will see that i was one of the first posters to say that you should have gotten the elite qualifying nights & there is no need to spend money on catering or av, etc in order to hold genuine meetings....there were a number of posters who asked you a few basic questions like whether these were genuine meetings or just for the purpose of getting 10 elite qualifying nights or if you actually attended the meetings....you haven't answered any of those questions & instead started getting defensive....i think an honest answer to those questions would have gotten you more sympathetic responses from other posters....