yulsee

It seems to me that Marriott Bonvoy has been on a mission to weed out the travel gamers/hackers. They eliminated the following tricks:

• Meetings that earn elite nights to earn status quickly and for cheap
• Rollover elite nights
• Combining multiple 15 elite nights earned from holding multiple Bonvoy credit cards
• Churning Amex and Chase Bonvoy cards simultaneously for the welcome bonuses
• Speculative points advance bookings that lock rates to beat category changes
• Gaining status that gives access to free breakfast and lounge access just from holding a credit card
• Travel (miles and stay) packages that are valuable.

Marriott also maliciously refused to disclose the legacy to new travel package conversion mappings in advance

Did Marriott hire a travel hacker or flyertalker to counsel them about weeding out the free loaders or is this resulting from complaints/snitching from DYKWIA on Other People's Money or rich members who wanted to keep the riffraff away from their lounges and luxury properties ?

LondonElite

Great news.

yulsee

NOT!

From a Titanium member with 81 elite nights (among which about 60 are point redemption stays) and only $850 spend in 2019 😏

Horace

Marriott Rewards members and SPG members who played by the rules were not "freeloaders." Some rules changed when the programs were merged. Others changed since then. That's not surprising.

For example, rollover elite nights were were a published program feature of Marriott Rewards. A few years ago, I only achieved 75 nights because I had rollover elite nights from the prior year. But that didn't make me a freeloader.

In the Marriott Bonvoy program, it's both harder and easier to achieve status. It's harder because some bonus elite night opportunities are no longer part of the program. It's easier because Marriott Bonvoy now has 7,000+ properties in the program due to the Starwood acquisition, new-builds, and re-flagged hotels.

Oxon Flyer

Interesting list OP, certainly illustrates the rate things are changing. I would agree though, that 'Rollover Nights' doesn't really belong.

scubadu

Honestly, the way you wrote this post makes it almost hard not to think Marriott is doing the right thing be weeding folks out...

Regards

yulsee

LondonElite

If you are upset that published benefits are not being honoured, that's one thing. Igf you are moaning about being caught out on dodgy practices that should have been clipped long ago, then I repeat that I'm happy that Marriott is taking a harder line here. AA seems to be doing the same thing, and I hope other airlines follow up. Play by the rules and all will be ok.

Kacee

We're seeing similar from other loyalty programs. It's directly related to the proliferation of bloggers promoting various "travel hacks."

Even if we agree that big picture, the over-exploitation of such "hacks" has crossed the line such that some closing of loopholes is warranted, that's no excuse for various other program devaluations which negatively impact large numbers of customers who've never pushed the envelope on any of this stuff.

Mr. Vker

Rollover nights were not gaming anything-published benefit.

Don't understand travel packages either. They devalued them greatly-to my sadness-but people using them weren't gaming anything.

Kacee

The bloggers were heavily pushing speculative travel package redemptions prior to the merger. Lots got burned with that play. Risks of the game IMO.

Mr. Vker

True-members may have burned-but not Marriott-and it was a legit use of points. I viewed the OP as a list of things we used to game the system.

mctaste

maybe this will see fewer freeloaders at the high end hotels, returning service standards to prior levels!

Kacee

Right. It's not so much the use of the benefits by your average program member, but the deliberate exploitation of them in an abusive manner that has caused the blowback.

Booking a travel package or two because it was a good value was fine. Booking ten Cat 5 packages speculatively right before the integration because you thought Marriott would cash you out at a higher value, and then tying up cs lines for hours trying to get out of your bet afterwards, was abusive.

Duke787

They're also weeding out the people who spend real $$$ and pushing them to other chains but I have no problem with them tightening up the earning requirements on the front end (just wish they would deliver more value on the backend like they used to)