t1c

Do you have a Marriott credit card? or have you been staying at a Ritz Carlton?

danola

Yes I have an MR Reserve card and I have stays at RC's previously but not for the stays in question. What is the significance of your question?

t1c

Those are 2 methods that nights can post and not points.

mdaecher

Points are what are holding me back from LT Platinum, and I am working at it before official merger. But having same problem - the "lifetime" points don't seem to update when checking using the website - hard to see how much progress I am making!

Anyone know how often the lifetime points updates?

danola

It's reassuring to know I am not the only one that is getting "frozen" out.... could this "glitch" be programmed in???

dcchi

I recently made LT Gold (already had nights so was looking at the points), so I was paying close attention to the points changes in my LT count. It seemed to me that they were updating at the same pace as my normal MR account points (including points for stays as well as credit card points). Of course, that was just my experience but thought I'd share.

Travellin_man

I've just hit Marriott Lifetime Platinum. Given that and the SPG/Marriott merger, I'm interested in other people's thinking, and strategy, for the future. Obviously I no longer need to chase Marriott nights each year to retain status, and will presumably retain Platinum for both Marriott and SPG until they fully merge.

For my future hotel needs, options might be:

1) Stay where I like within the Marriott/SPG envelope, enjoy all the benefits, collecting Platinum bonuses etc, and trying to hit whatever periodic bonuses arise just to bank points for future use.

2) Build up my SPG stays, in case the merger is some weird averaging of the Marriott and SPG status.

3) Status match somewhere, I guess realistically Hilton, and start building status there.

4) Stretch out, stay wherever I want, including cute little non-chains hotels, knowing I can always run to the Marriott/SPG mothership whenever I need to.

5) Worry that Marriott might introduce an uberPlatinum level in the future and keep mindlessly accumulating nights and points just in case.....

I can't be the only one in this place - what do others think?

TM

Srisarin

4 (until Marriott announces what's what and when)

darthbimmer

I suggest a combination of 1 and 4, plus maybe a tiny bit of 3.

Make #1 your first option. Having earned LT plat status you should take advantage of the benefits by staying with MR when reasonable.

Keep #4 in mind because sometimes MR properties have weak offerings or high prices relative to other hotels in the market. Now that you're freed from chasing status there's no pressure to stay with MR when their benefits aren't worth the costs.

Finally, #3 . It's worth increasing your options by having status in a second chain-- but only if you can maintain at least mid-tier status. Getting silver somewhere else isn't worth forgoing MR/SPG plat benefits on your stays. Also, if you do pursue a second program, I don't know that Hilton is the right choice. It depends on what you need when MR/SPG don't fit the bill.

CJKatl

This is likely not a concern. The ill will Marriott would get from doing something like this wouldn't be worth it to them. I do think, in my totally uninformed opinion, that either the Marriott Gold and Plat nights requirements will be carried over, resulting in SPG Golds being upset, or the SPG Gold and Plat nights requirement will be carried over with both a drop in Gold benefits - specifically lounge access - and a tiered Plat system. If it's the latter, LTP will likely be given the lowest Plat designation, with maybe the chance to achieve higher designation at higher levels; ie 4k points and 1.5k night gets you LT at the next tier. But either way, if you are LTP in one of the programs you will, in my estimation, keep LTP going forward.

BTW, I've been upping my SPG stays because of the conversion to Marriott points rate. A 500 point welcome gift translates to 1.5k Marriott points, and the 3:1 conversion makes SPG earnings more valuable than Marriott's for the same money spent. Putting the cc points to the side, given you get the same at both chains, if a Plat spends $200 at a Marriott, you get 3.5k points for the room and welcome amenity. If you spend the same at an SPG property, you get 1.3k SPG points. Flip that to your Marriott Rewards account and it become 3.9k points. For one or two night stays, this is a winner in my book.

sdsearch

The only lifetime status Hilton seems to have so far is Diamond, and it seems to require something like 1000 paid nights, last I heard.

Meanwhile, you can have Hilton Gold status (which is the "sweet spot", much like with Marriott) for $75 a year by holding the Hilton Honors Surpass card from American Express. So why bother to "build" status there, unless you're going to go for Diamond and you have a realistic chance of getting to lifetime Diamond there sometime?

So while you may want to try get a status match from Hilton to save $75 for a year or two, IMHO it's not worth doing a lot of "hard work" to get Hilton status. (Similar for IHG status, except in that case the status doesn't give you much benefits anyway, and the credit card has a "net negative" annual fee.)

alrvd83

I was able to make SPIRE Elite with IHG last yr as well. Since I recently made lifetime Marriott, I will just stay with IHG for the remainder of the yr. Occasionally stay in Marriott/SPG.

I just need a break from courtyard and marriott beds for a few months lol

osugrad2x

I know its a bad redemption to convert my UR points to Marriott but im 100K from Lifetime Gold that i'm seriously considering it since I have 90K UR points.

Is there a general consensus that if you dont have lifetime status before the program merge that there will be new requirements? I would hate to give up all my UR points to find out i no longer get lounge access.

hhoope01

If I were in your shoes, I'd hold off. Marriott, historically, has given its membership decent notice of any major changes. So assuming they will give us advanced notice of what the new rules will be, you should still have an opportunity to transfer those UR points if you need to. But by waiting, maybe you can earn more points in the meantime and not have to transfer as many UR points.

sdsearch

You seem to be confusing requirements with benefits.

Requirements are what you need to earn lifetime status. Benefits are what the status gives.

The current Marriott Lifetime Gold requirements are 500 lifetime nights plus 1.6 million lifetime points. Lounge access is a Gold benefit, not a Lifetime Gold requirement.

It's much more likely that the requirements will change than than that the benefits will change. It would not be competitive for Marriott to continue to require 50 nights for a status which gives no lounge access, when SPG did the same at 50 nights. The SPG status that SPG calls "Gold" is much closer to Marriott Silver than to Marriott Gold.

However, SPG's lifetime status requirements do not involve points at all, only nights and years.

So it's not lounge status that you should be worried about, but the possibility that if you wait you might not need any lifetime points at all (and thus any UR points transferred now might be a "waste" if you didn't need the points for stays, just for lifetime status, and if you didn't need lifetime status now, just later).

So I agree with hhoope01 that you should wait to see what happens. If it turns out they'll get rid of the points requirements but add a years requirement which you're even further away from, you should have time to transfer those UR points (assuming you haven't used them for something else) at that time. But if it turns out that they'll get rid of (or reduce) the points requirement and not add any new requirements you haven't met already, then you won't ever need to use your UR points for this.