UA-NYC

Lucrative promos aren't long gone...just long gone w/Marriott

Voodoo Daddy

If you believe this, I have some real estate I'd like to talk to you about...

MePlatPremier

RollAnotherFatOne

i have to admit that what you wrote sounds strange - i have never heard of people leaving an airline/travel brand not because of the quality, but exclusively because of their perception of other customers and the price that they feel these customers may have or may not have paid for the service. i'm not sure hotels and airlines should delve into dynamic pricing if such concerns are held by the majority of customers. the fact that everyone pays a different price on a plane and likewise at each property must cause you and others great concern - perhaps to the extent that you would do a survey and where you find the biggest variance, you could tell the brand that you're leaving them for this reason? i don't think so somehow. because typically you are more interested in the product and service than the inconsequentials that make little to no difference to your 'experience'.

it is fair to say that people don't want to pay more than they have to and if they see other people getting a freebie then they won't like it. i travel exclusively in business and first and yes, i understand this. american carriers are less popular with me because they give their loyal customers free upgrades. in fact there are often debates about whether economy people should be able to use facilities and i do think they should be pushed back to where they came from - but that's a separate debate.

with regards to your discussion about airline loyalty for error fares, then maybe i'm in the minority in selecting airlines based on my experience. if i got lucky with a cheap fare in business somewhere then in future i'm more likely to fly with that airline than someone i've never been with. similarly, there are now so many youtube, instagram, and other travel blogs that detail experience which provide many people who wouldn't ordinarily consider premium travel. you just need to look at the video views to see that the aspiration is there. for me, depending on the maths i'd pay the extra if i've had good experiences in that premium cabin before. and if i hadn't, i'd take a look on youtube etc. so you can see how the marketing works.. i really don't see premium customers leaving cathay because some people got a few cheap flights.

your discussion is simply you saying that there should be limited sales and prices should be high - that way people who are loyal don't feel disgruntled when they see others getting something for less. and while i can see that, it does just look to me like one side of a coin. marriott is simply not an elite brand and acting in such a way would just drag down its business. it would wait for the customers to arrive and they just wouldn't arrive without being incentivised.

MSPeconomist

RollAnotherFatOne

there are different ways of looking at value and worth, but typically it's how much someone is willing to pay for something.
this can be affected by the means with which they do this - currency, points, etc.
however, not everyone sees value in the same way, and not everyone's circumstances are the same.
what you've written seems to imply that value cannot be defined in terms of convenience, preference, and that variance in approach does not exist amongst customers.
hotels would typically have higher prices that increases nearer the date of stay.
as a loyal customer, i would be incentivised to stay by the convenience of booking points nearer the time as the points price of the stay may be less than the cash price. if i couldn't find value in the points price, then maybe my loyalty is not worth that much and i would just stay somewhere else.. similarly, if i was staying for business, the price wouldn't matter so much. in each case, the hotel would benefit by having a good price points deal and high rack rate.

C17PSGR

This is the best Marriott promo in quite a while, from a guest perspective. Very simple and very lucrative. I've probably earned more already than in the last three or four promos combined.

I don't see much thought into this promo, which is why I think its just to try to dial back the noise with a simple easy promo.

uscgto

correct. I don't even spend a lot ($700 or so a week) and in last 4 weeks, I have managed to get close to 30k points thanks to promotion.. another 25k plus as titanium bonus and a base of 30k plus points ..add the credit card spend and it's a 100k month. expect the next 2 be similar.

and so I think perhaps it'll be hard to match a promotion as lucrative as this.

C17PSGR

Exactly. I can't remember another Marriott promo where lots of people were getting 75-150k in points from a promo.

A good promo needs to drive consumer behavior, such as a decent bonus to try different brands. For example, the 10k for 10 brands was a good idea. The 29k for 29 brands was stupid because no one could do it and it wasn't much of a bennie anyway.

The two night stay requirement in the last one was difficult and irritated Marriott's best guests. It was driven by Arne hearing about a blog talking about getting multi plat bonuses by switching hotels.

sdsearch

You're presumably staying at expensive properties (perhaps reimbursed by work)?

2x promos are lucrative only for people who either stay at a hotel almost every night of the promo anyway, and/or stay at expensive properties.

They're not all lucrative for people who stay in cheap suburban properties (either because they're on their own dime and/or just because that's where they need to stay anyway) and only a few nights a week at most. For those people, 25000 bonus points for 10 nights would be way more lucrative (especially if they can shift the rest of their stays to other hotel programs with other "lucrative" promos), while for the people who stay at expensive properties and stay lots of nights anyway it may be less lucrative.

So "lucrative" is often in the eyes of the beholder.

kaizen7

I'm hoping for a global (not targeted) double night credit promotion

escape4

The promo started not even a month ago, so ignoring the fact that the first stay did not earn any bonus, that means $7500 spend in less than 30 days = $250 per night if you have been in hotels all month and did not spread the wealth to other hotel chains. Or maybe a 10-night vacation splurge at $750 per night.

I am not doubting what you say, but I would simply note that you are probably at the high end of who benefited the most from the promo; you are not the norm and therefore I would not call the promo lucrative simply based on your experience. Of course anybody spending $5k+ in the promo month will benefit, but most Ambassador level guests spend $20-40k per year, not $5k per month (= $60k per year), let alone $7.5k per month. Not even mentioning the large number of guests below AMB level who are nowhere near that.

I have spent $2600 since the promo started and cutting out my first stay I am at $2k spend, so 20k bonus points... as far as I am concerned it's nothing to write home about bonus-wise, it's a good bonus but not over the top. And I am sure I benefited more than 95% of folks, yet you are almost at 4x my bonus so far... which means you are possibly in the 99.9 percentile. For the vast majority of people, this promo is just ok.

Maybe it's just semantics but for the fun of the discussion, for me to call a promo "lucrative" I need to see better than double points because all it's doing is giving you an extra 10% discount, approximately. A lucrative promo in my humble opinion is Hilton's occasional triple points promo, or Hyatt's promo a couple of years ago where 25 nights during the period netted you 75k points (= great value if you stay at cheap hotels). Or when Hilton had a stackable promo of double points + 2500 Lufthansa miles per stay, great if you have lots of 1-night stays, in fact it made some stays almost free. Those promos resulted in a discount of far more than 10%. Double points is a decent promo, but fairly average. I prefer a 10% discount to no discount, but it won't change my decisions for many stays.

escape4

I would trade you some of your spend dollars for some of my night credits

uscgto

You and I seem to be the same boat.
I spend 4-6 nights a week at category 2-3 hotels. So basically 22 or so nights a month.

excluding the first stay, I spent close to $2300 and that gave me ~ 29 nights but only 2300 x 10. so 23000 points.

Now, if Marriott was to offer mega points (75k bonus) for 25 nights or so, i'd be a happy camper.

freed0m