Vince Chan

Sheraton in hsinchu,Taiwan moving from Cat3 to cat 4 this month.

4P in Bangkok also rises category recently.

I ask Marriott guest service they said as long as the owner asking for this and if Marriott approved, hotels can moving up category anyway they want.


Is this even legal? I thought category changes happening in the same time once a year.

Is Marriott getting more and more like crappy horrible IHG program?

Jared Ito

kaizen7

I doubt it as simple as that.
If its true then we should have all tier 8 properties everywhere

I believe there are certain standard/ key performance index that they need to achieve before they can ask to gain category

barracuda93

It's very dishonest, but yes, completely legal.

And indeed exactly the same behavior as of IHG.

craigthemif

Not all hoteliers hate points bookings. It fills otherwise empty rooms. (not everybody trades off points vs. cash) People who are staying "for free" can be tempted to spend more on food and services at the hotel. etc.

Hotels that don't want points bookings tend to play games with standard room definitions, rather than push for an unrealistically high award category.

MSPeconomist

barracuda93

Can't imagine so many people redeem nights at cheap and average Aloft Sukhimvit that it drives it's price to Cat. 3, making it extremely poor value, while so few redeem at decent and more expensive Aloft KL that it does down to Cat. 1.

MSPeconomist

CPRich

Is it legal? What criminal statute do you think it would violate? Every airline, hotel, car rental, etc. program reserves the right to change the program at any time.

I don't know if they're getting "more and more" like anyone else, but mid-year category changes have happened in small volumes for many, many years at both Marriott and SPG. Two of 7,000+ isn't exactly a tidal wave.

Dr. HFH

Then what, in your opinion, makes it dishonest?


And every airline. They all have provisions in the Terms and Conditions which explicitly say that they can change the rules without advance, or even any, notice.


Many people quite like it.

barracuda93

1. People earn and buy points having in mind specific redemptions. If prices are inflated randomly, it becomes effectively a cheating. One cannot revert all transactions, turning points back into cash. This is not like money prices inflation, when increase is always slow, gradual and predictable.
As a more obvious case consider a situation when Marriott sells points at 15k for 100 USD, everyone buys in huge volumes, and then Categories prices are doubled. Still legal, right? Do you think this is honest though?

Scheduled devaluations with advance notice are okay, as customers have a chance of getting the value of their points as planned.

2. As long as advance points bookings are possible, as it's the case with Marriott, sudden random devaluations promote speculative bookings. This is bad for everyone.

3. Strange to see you are surprised something can be within the law, yet still dishonest. That's how many things actually work, including advertisements, when implicit promises are made that are not legally binding for the business.

TerryK

Is there a law in any country which governs how frequent guest program can change redemption categories?

mahasamatman

Only people who don't read the T&C. No hotel program has ever said that all category changes happen at once. On the contrary, they all state that category changes can happen at any time. It pays to understand the program if you don't want to suffer continuous disappointment.

TravelLawyer

OP is probably referring to notice and disclosure laws or consumer protection laws. Although I assume all reward programs have disclaimers allowing them to change redemption terms without notice at any time.

SkiAdcock

Agree.