Too funny - good point - just changed it myself.

So 5 nighters are available again?

YMMV but probably not... unless you get extremely lucky

Spouse tried 3x. Hard no.

Little over a week ago I booked a 5night after HUCA'ing about 12 or 13 times. Very shortly after that I heard some rumors from friends that marriott was reminding csr's about not booking 5 night packages... so YMMV, but I imagine if you find someone who's clueless you can get it done.

Shouldve redeemed multiple packages ;)

The most I did was times. 12/13 times are a lot. I always thought they have notes/comments on the account each time you call. Guess they do not. Maybe I need to give it a try again.

Did it about 10 times all different day and nights. No luck. May finally bite the bullet and do the transfer. With each time, shot down right away. No waiting, no asking supervisor. I think CSR may be well educated now.

7 nights redemption
 

What are the restrictions for the hotel certificate? Can they be used at any hotel as long as it's within the category limit? And are there blackout dates?

The hotel cert is no different than a normal hotel night award. If there is standard room award availability then the TP hotel cert can be used as well.

Like all Marriott hotel award availability, there are no blackout dates, but there are capacity controls for award availability.

I must be missing something here. I'm trying to order a travel package (120k SW points) and when I click it I get a pop up that says select quantity at the top, but no option to select the quantity? Any help or ideas here? Thanks

I'd also add that if you redeem a Travel Package without knowing where you really want to stay (as many of us do), you're best off redeeming the Cat 5 package. You can always upgrade your hotel certificate if you find a higher category hotel later. But you can't go the other way: you can use your Cat 9 certificate at a Cat 8 hotel, but they don't refund any points.

I'm not sure how this works if you cross between the Ritz tiers and Marriott levels. If you have your sights on a Ritz, you *might* need to redeem a Ritz award out of the gate: I don't know for sure. (My guess is that in 2018, there will be one massive award chart, but no one really knows for sure.)

In my experience, finding availability within Marriott's regular properties is not too hard unless you're going after a very high-demand place. Things like "I want to find something in a good location in London for a week" usually work fine. MVCI's are an exception: those can be a pain to find availability.

True, but that is because they are not hotels but timeshares. Marriott can't control the room inventory of those like they can a hotel.

This is contrary to what has been posted in the past:

I've seen other posts saying it's a YMMV situation, but if people can still get 5-day travel packages without being a vacation owner, you'd have to think that you would be able to get a refund. Regardless, I agree that it's still better to under purchase and go up in category.

"Always", that is, unless Marriott changes the points required for higher categories or discontinues Travel Packages altogether. I decided to lock in the top category now, since that's my most likely use. Also, if they create higher categories in the future I can argue that I redeemed the top category award so I should be able to stay in the top category properties.

I'm more than mildly surprised that Marriott has not yet pulled the plug on Travel Packages. I'm sure they are getting hit very hard with redemptions. Overexposure will kill both the Travel Package and the Companion Pass a lot earlier than they would have died naturally.