I do my best to say it like it is.

For the credit cards, people are welcome to drop those if they don’t like the changes. Or they are welcome to press Marriott or Chase/Amex to provide points rather than stays with these changes. These are certainly a devaluation, but it’s a devaluation of a one night stay for each credit card.

For the rest, the sky isn’t falling despite protests to the contrary.

Even if all Cat 6, 7, and 8 awards become entirely peak pricing, they still cost less in comparable points than they did with SPG. And elites earn more points through stays with Bonvoy than they did with SPG. So again, it’s still not nearly as crushing as some are trying to pretend.

Let’s see what people are forgetting when they claim it’s hard to have faith in Marriott:

Marriott has largely mirrored the best of SPG with Bonvoy. All the panic from SPG elites worried that Marriott would destroy SPG was absolutely unnecessary and misplaced.

Let’s not forget that SPG had peak pricing. Marriott’s peak pricing is still lower relative to that of SPG. That fear was misplaced.

Lets not forget that SPG never had points advance. So Marriott lent one of its most popular features for a while despite it never having been part of the better SPG program. Devaluing it now to avoid the rampant speculation it causes still leaves it better than nothing.

Let’s remember when everyone decried how Marriott would end suite upgrades as was done with SPG. Sorry, but elites now have the possibility of suite upgrades at far more properties and even brands that never had them before like RC and Edition, let alone all the Marriott brands that didn’t remotely routinely give them. Now they do. My suite upgrades have been vastly better with Bonvoy. Those fears and the panic was misplaced.

Let’s remember when everyone was worried about how Marriott would equilibrate the SPG points. They gave us 3 Marriott points per SPG point. That fear was badly misplaced.

Lets remember when everyone speculated and took advantage of the reduced points cost for all the top most aspirational properties in the world. No one complained then about the change that precluded the introduction of Cat 8 for 2 years. How many of us used our points and the new points advance to get awards to properties that were unattainable for most up to that point? How many of us managed to get award stays for ridiculous savings in points from what we were used to or couldn’t even hope to get with SPG? So much for those fears being misplaced.

Yes, most of the misplaced fears have been about needless panic that ended up in most of the best SPG and Marriott Bonvoy customers getting way more than we ever imagined. So a lot of massively misplaced fears, indeed.