Premium room awards gone under new Marriott program?
 

With Starwood we could pay higher prices for higher category award rooms if the basic award rooms were sold out. Is this no longer possible under the new program? Was trying to book an award night and the agent had no clue what I was asking for after she confirmed that there were no basic room awards available. Most frustrating...I was on hold for over 40 minutes to even get an agent and then she had no clue.

IME Marriott attached a cash co-pay to the award (versus adding more points), but I don't have a ton of experience with these.

Upgrade point values
 

I've been looking to schedule a beach vacation on points. I'm a little perplexed with what I am seeing. There have been some changes to the base room points as we all knew would occur. What I find perplexing is what has happened to the values of using additional points (eCert upgrades I think??) to reserve a higher category room.

Here's an example: Looking at the Cancun Ritz Carlton for 11/1, for one night.

* Ocean View guest room is 50,000 points OR cash price of $448.
* Ocean Front guest room is 100,000 points OR cash price of $507

50,000 points for $59 worth of value? I can get a second room, wroth $448 for the same 50K points! Having been to this hotel, i would get the ocean view is there is very little difference, but that's beyond the point.

I saw another example in Aruba. A "limited view room" is 200K points for 5 nights. a Garden view room is 200K points + $125 (per stay, not night) OR 475,000 points.

This doesn't pass the smell test. Either there is some kind of bug in the way they calculate these values OR they are trying to STRONGLY discourage us from using points for category upgrades. I called Marriott rewards and the agent was as confused as I was. 275,000 points for $125 worth of value? That doesn't make any sense based on any translation I've ever seen. At first she thought it might have been a seasonal adjustment, but it's not high season and even if it was, the seasonal adjustment would also be in the base rate.

I've tried Marriott's, Ritz Carlton, and JW Marriott properties in multiple countries. Does anyone have any insight?

Thanks!

Brian

I see some (Marriott) properties that show premium award pricing and availability online. I hope that is the (near) future for the Starwood-origin properties.

I sincerely hope this isn't the intention. I thought they wanted to encourage us to burn additional points for a simple category upgrade.

It depends. Some properties offer all point upgrades, some offer an upgrade for a per night cash fee, some offer both. And I have seen both post August 18. I believe these are at the property's discretion.

It looks like Marriott is changing how point upgrades are working. Pre-Merge, it was always based off 1 or more 5K upgrade certs per night. I checked around a few different cities and it looks like Marriott has done away with that system. My guess is since this is new it is very probable that hotels are still trying to figure out how to use it to list upgrades. So I couldn't say if in a month or more out, the RC will still show 50K extra per night for what could be purchased for $50/night.

But I'm guessing that in general, upgrades will tend to cost more points than they used to. ;)

This just looks to me like something that went terribly wrong as part of the merger. if the cost of the upgrades went up incrementally, I wouldn't really have much to complain about. If this isn't a mistake, they must want to discourage the use of points for upgrades.

In the case of the RC, I'd simply bring another couple and give them a free room before I'd spend 50K points for move up one category. And in my last experience at that hotel, as a platinum premier, they upgraded me two categories for my status with no additional cost. .

Agree. With Starwood, it wasn't unusual to spend an extra 1500 pts (4500 Marriott pts) for a category upgrade if base room wasn't available. With Marriott, it's a whole order of magnitude larger. :(

It didn't used to be -- They went up drastically on the 18th. A club level room at a RC that I like was 75-85K/night the week before the 18th, I think 125K afterwards, though that is hardly the worst example. The ones I gave earlier are worse. Double the points for a $59 difference in price?!