DELee

Fundamentally, Ambassador is stays (100 nights) _and_ spend ($20K). Titanium is stays (75 nights).

The more nights one earns via non-stays (credit card, etc.), the more per night one would need to spend to maintain Ambassador.

So, maintaining Ambassador isn't hard if you're staying and willing to spend. If you're not willing to spend, then, yes, it is a pain in the patootie.

David

drod

I'm nearly at 100 Marriott nights, but $16k short (Marriott not worth spending money on). What should I do, given that I'm at 80 nights with Hyatt but intrigued by the IHG program (Diamond/AMB member, but 5 nights short of the first threshold for the new bonus)?!

I'll answer my own question, go for 100 Hyatt!!

zoqfotpik

Suppose you have extra cash to spare, can you not just buy gift cards and charge it to your room? Or book an event to reach the spend threshold?

4getofn

Well it appears we really finally seeing rollover end 👍 Good news !

SacTownGuy

Do not waste your money. If you want to go on a nice vacation then go spend $4k at a hotel. Otherwise do not spend $4k for what by almost all accounts are nearly worthless benefits. This is a benefit like the fool that stand in line for a half hour to go to the Amex lounge at the airport. Lol. Clowns!

SacTownGuy

Well said! Better to shift to another brand once you get plat.

Keyser

Buying gift cards & booking an event do not count towards the Ambassador spend requirement.

clarkef

You find that your credit card companies err more than $2,000 a year? You may want to re-evaluate your relationship with your credit card companies. I used to be fastidious with checking bills. I found that the error rate was extremely low. I found that since my background affords me a high level of mathematical acumen, I am satisfied with light perusal for either gross or commonplace errors. I suspect that your friends are like me and have made the decision that the likely small sums involved aren't worth the effort; that those resources of time and energy could be put to better use. You made a different decision. Both decisions are 100% correct. And that was the only point that I earlier attempted, perhaps poorly, to get across, that different folks have different needs and desires which will directly impact their decisions.

As far as most travelers not caring about points...maybe. Certainly not in the same was as the average Flyertalk poster does. I suspect that most leisure travelers accumulate loyalty points (whether hotel points or airline miles) with the idea of making a vacation either a little better (upgrades) or a little cheaper. The nice thing about being a leisure traveler is the flexibility. I recently went on vacation with my family to Rome. We're all Marriott members so we had the choice of 10 hotels. Were we using points, if one hotel didn't have availability, we had 9 others to choose from within our desired locale. Were I traveling for business, as I will be during October, I will have little flexibility in my lodging.

margarita girl

That only makes sense. If buying gift cards counted towards spend, you would be double dipping when redeeming those same gift cards.

Charlie32

As a current ambassador member who has been for the last 5 years, there is no way that I would spend 4K to maintain Ambassador.

The actual ambassador service is next to useless, I have had far better success just emailing the hotel directly rather than using the ambassador service. Particularly post Covid the responses from the ambassador service are always slow and on one occasion, not received until 2 weeks later by which time I had already checked out of the hotel.

From my experience Asia is by far the best place for Elite recognition, we have had some brilliant upgrades as well as GMs falling over themselves to meet us in places like Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan.

Across the rest of the world our experience has been very mixed with regards to acknowledgement but we have been upgraded regularly to big suites in most major cities that we have travelled to.

I have never been titanium so I can’t say whether we would have got these upgrades if we weren’t ambassador so maybe that is a factor, but actually having an ambassador to help with bookings and reservations has been almost worthless in my experience.

MSPeconomist

Correction: Stays don't count for Bonvoy, although they once did for SPG. All published Marriott statuses are based on nights (not stays), and Ambassador also has a spend requirement.

DELee

Sorry, yes. Stays should have been nights.

David

p.s. Another palindrome!

lilpisher

Was reminiscing tonight as I learned that the standard room available on points benefit is gone. Prior to the merger, a hotel had a minimum length of stay requirement. My Ambassador couldn’t get the hotel to waive the requirement for me so she gifted me the necessary points to get over the minimum LOS requirement. Those were the days..

s0ssos

When you say credit card error, do you mean the credit card company made a mistake or some merchant made a mistake?
I do find mistakes made by merchants every now and then. Some being the amounts are wrong. But that actually requires work checking your bills.
Is it a large amount of money for one single transaction? No. But if every week something gets missed, I can easily see how that adds up for more than a couple thousand (so the hotel charges valet for 3 nights when you only used 1, would you catch that on your credit card bill? Or would you look at the bill from the hotel first? My friend does neither. He may check the bill for the food after he brings it all home, but then what's the point?) But yes, I still look through bills and the such, cause I just find it wasteful otherwise.

Regarding points, someone I consider relatively intelligent, who travels a bit, is probably more representative of the general populace. When he has points he uses them when he wants to go somewhere. Not because of a good deal. So for airline tickets if he wants to go to England, he is going to England, and the points work or they don't work. It doesn't matter if there are better deals for France.
As for flexibility for hotels it depends on how many beds you need, and how much space. For example say you need 2 queen beds in London, how many options are there with Marriott points (recently I looked for 3 sleeping surfaces in the US. It rules out many hotels, because you need a room with 2 queens/kings and a sofabed, which for Marriott is SHS or 2 bedroom options in RI or TP. Hilton is basically useless, Hyatt has the HP or HH options.
And, as you mentioned, it obviously depends on how your flexibility with dates. If you are retired or don't have a full-time job, then it is easy. If you are otherwise bound, then ...

As someone else mentioned, there is an opportunity cost to trying to reach Ambassador. There is no "organically." Because people trying to reach status will direct their stays (and change their plans otherwise) to a chain, when there are likely many better independent lodging establishments that are a better fit. But that is because it makes use feel better, cause we get a "better deal" staying with Marriott than "local hotel" even if the price is the same because of the perks (points mainly, other things not being guaranteed).

Safti

I totally agree with this. I am LT and have made Ambasador. I knew much more than my Ambassador about how to navigate the Marriott system. What I did learn from my Ambassador (who came over from SPG back during the 2018 merger) is that the Ambassador role at SPG was a more meaningful and useful than what it actually became after the merger. Marriott never had an Ambassador program until they acquired SPG. The SPG Ambassadors faced challenges learning the Marriott Ambassador program mostly because they really don't carry the leverage at Marriott in the way they did at SPG. It is a useless program and not worth spending $4K to achieve. As other posters have said, I would much rather take that $4K and put it toward a memory with my family. Now that has some staying power!