GeorgeM

Why are you only given the option to redeem the most cheapest rooms for any Marriott/SPG hotel when using Points? Every hotel I check from the Marriott website, for many different cities, across many different times six to seven months from now, only shows the most cheapest room via Points. What is the reason to belong to a loyalty program if you really can't redeem them for anything of value? It doesn't matter if I use Cash + Points or just Points.

Am I missing something?

nexusCFX

Hotels can and often choose to only offer the base level rooms for award redemptions. What's the surprise here? Is a free night not something of value if it's in a base level room? You can always reach out to properties and try to negotiate a cash upgrade on a point rate.

nickohrn

Exactly this - if you want an upgraded room, just book the award redemption and then call or email and negotiate an upcharge for the room you want.

dcstudent

OP, nothing strange with only offering base rooms. Starwood only had base rooms for points, but you could call and get higher level rooms for more points (often as little as 1000-1500 extra points a night). Not sure if Marriott offers the same in the merged program (as I've only redeemed for base rooms and applied SNAs since 8/18).

mahasamatman

Welcome to FT, GeorgeM!

Because that's the way all hotel programs are set up. No hotel chain feels it's important to offer anything higher, though some individual properties may.

swag

I was looking the other day at the Marriott Grand resort (Point Clear AL) and was pleased that for point redemptions, the website offered two categories of upgraded rooms for a cash copay. And the cash upcharge was the same as the difference between the cash price for the rooms.

I wish more hotels did this.

Westcoaster

All the Hilton properties I stay at allow points redemptions for upgraded rooms.

Tizzette

caburrito

Yes, Cosmopolitan Las Vegas allows you to get suites with points. I believe the Maldives have options to redeem villa's over/near water for points as well.

FlyingFrZ

I also did this quite a few times with SPG before the merger. You would only see base rooms for point redemptions on the website, but if you called, the agents were able to search if higher level rooms were offered for more points. As mentioned above, the rates were often very reasonable, with suites only a few thousand more per night.

Not sure if this has carried over into the new program.

kkl

was able to book a cat5 suite for 53k points instead of 35k standard room at St Regis. this was before the merger in mid dec.

thebackcourse

It's not nearly as prevalent with the combined system as it was under SPG only. Under the spg system all hotels were required to offer any base level room available on a paid rate to be available on points. In the rare cases that a base room was available on paid rate but not on points agents were able to do an override. The vast majority of the properties in the legacy spg system offered at least 2 grades and sometimes as many as 5 or 6 levels. Specialty, specialty select, suite upgrade, and suite upgrade 2, 3, 4 I believe was the highest I saw and was usually at places like Maldives and Bora Bora. Granted the basic suite upgrade was double the base level room in points it was at least available if you wanted to spend the points. Whether it was of value was up to the member to decide but it was an option given.

The Marriott system seems to offer mainly paid upgrades IF there is any sort offered at all.

wingzing

I too used to regularly obtain executive club rooms on points with SPG. I just tried to do this for a couple of Marriott properties (Sheraton and JW Marriott in HK) and the agent said that only base rooms are available at ALL Marriott properties, including ex-SPG properties. Empirically, this seems to be correct, but I have not seen an official announcement. Sure makes Rewards points less appealing to me.

Agent suggests booking base room and trying to upgrade ( for an upcharge) on the day of arrival. Of course, availability may be a problem.

3Cforme

I appreciate your efforts to document this but I'm not going to accept the word of one phone agent (out of what, maybe 10,000?) as company policy. Now, if you've tested this across ten agents and fifty properties across six continents, that's different.

wingzing

Like I said, I have heard of no official company policy. I would be delighted to hear FTer reports that they have been able to use points to book club rooms.