I hear ya ^

I have Ko'Olina this summer and any savings will be nice

finally I can use a true enhancement

So are these downgrades automatic credits of points back (upon a call) or is subject to availability again?

I'm not complaining as I would not book these anyway (I despise the CY product) but some of the CY increases made me shake my head in disbelief

Last year I had a reservation at Waikoloa when it moved from 7 to 6, I just called and they took care of it.

Same here. I've had to make a call, but Marriott has had no problem issuing credits where point requirements have changed.

Most of the increases from category 5 to 6 are properties in Virginia Beach (4) and two other oceanside properties in the US. I am not surprised about the bump up for the two German properties. I have not stayed at these properties, but they seem to provide good value based on the opinion of people on FT.

Call me naive, but I still find it surprising that so many people want to use points for Virginia Beach and Orlando. The award categories are so out of whack in these markets that I would not burn points for a category 4-6 CY that has a room rate under $150.

With the reduction in categories, you can now use a category 5 Visa certificate at the JW properties in Atlanta and Beijing along with the Orlando World Center Marriott.

I may be tempted to do that for the Orlando property since I can rent the golf clubs for free as a PP member (used to be $25/day when I stayed in 2008 but it was cheaper to pay a package that included the golf clubs, internet and self parking) and roam the internet for free. This would actually make it cheaper for me to pay for self parking alone.

Since it's now March 7, I guess we're not going to get the much-requested list of the cat 1-5 changes prior to them going into effect...

Changes are not posted yet on Marriott website when searching by hotel category.

March 8th Changes
 

I have spoken with 3 different individuals on the Platinum Line today March 8th, the day the category changes are to take place. NONE of these individuals nor their supervisors are aware of the changes and are NOT helpful at all. The right hand surely does NOT know what the left hand is doing here again. The down economy has really hurt Marriott in its training and communications employees. The management continues to stumble after their attempt to enhance the rewards program.

There wouldn't really be much reason for every customer service rep to be aware of the changes to hotel categories. They'll update in the system, and after that, they'll be what they are. I would doubt your average CSR is made aware of the changes ahead of time.

It's not too dissimilar from hotel rates - certainly all CSR's aren't made aware of all rate changes across the Marriott system. They are what they are, and as long as they can process them appropriately, they don't need to know when they changed or what they used to be.

It would have been nice to have a list of all of the changes made available to Marriott Rewards members, but I don't really think that's a CSR training issue.

Personally, I would want my client interfaces to know that a change just occured. The problem with your comparison is that rates change daily (possibly even hourly). A CSR would know that. Hotels don't change Category levels every day. This is usually a once a year event. I would have thought Marriott would let them know that a change was made. This would keep the CSRs from being blindsided by questions about and around those changes. And allow them to field questions a bit easier.

You would think, and if it were up to me, they would have all been furnished a list a couple of weeks ago (along with all MR members). I'm just saying it's not a matter of critical importance to booking reservations, and I don't think it warrants multiple calls and supervisors.

I did have a thought, though. Beach9bum, were you calling the reservations line, or the Marriott Rewards customer service line? I, for some reason, assumed you were talking about the reservations line, and I would expect that the agents staffing the MR customer service line would be more informed about something like this (at least I would hope).

Since I was attempting to make a reservation I called the Platinum Reservations line. They still had the "old" point value and even after speaking to a supervisor.

Not that it's a tremendous amount of consolation to you today, but Marriott Concierge's post did say that it was going to be effective for reservations made after March 8, 2010.

Well, right now its 14.00 in the UK on March 9th 2010, and Ren Chancery Court is still a cat 8 :confused:

And as someone mentioned on a blog, it would have been nice for the Cat 1-5 changes to be listed in advance, so folk could redeem for the lesser amount if a property they wanted was going up. Cheers.

I'm late to the party as usual....just came across this thread today. But I'd like to also add my note of thanks to Andrew and to Marriott. In general, I definitely like what I see!