It's really up to you for what *you* enjoy. We used our hotel cert for 7 nights at the Wailea Beach Resort this year, which was fantastic. We can do 7 days at a beach easily, but probably would do 7 days only in certain cities like Seoul (which we're doing in September) or Amsterdam (favorite European city so far).

But remember: you don't have to use the miles when booking the hotel; just transfer them to a partner and use them whenever. We used UR for the Hawaii flights earlier this year, and are paying cash to fly to Korea. The miles will be Cathay Pacific or another airline in J to Asia at some point, but we divorced them from the hotel stays for maximum flexibility.

That might be true, but SPG Lurker himself is saying he doesn't know what the refund for the floating certificates will be:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29777835-post1288.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=emai l&utm_campaign=Frequent%20Miler%20%28Instant%29

I'm beginning to worry it will never be clear.

... until it's too late to do anything else.

That blogger's article is full of misleading speculation. He kept saying Lurker "believes" or Lurker knew but would not reveal to avoid a gold rush - while in all reality, William has repeatedly said anything he wrtes either publicly or via PM has to be first reviewed and approved by the Marriott Loyalty Team. In other words, what he is TOLD is all what he has known. No more, no less.

As of today, Lurker has NOT known anything yet, as what is in the Wiki on the SPG side as quoted by Kalboz in his post below.

Yet the blogger just tried to attract eyeballs to write a piece full of speculation without any fact to back it up.

The blogger conveniently omitted what William said on May 10 about his position on anything related to the upcoming merger he posted or via the PM.

Exactly.

This is what Lurker has said on May 10 when someone asked Williams on the point conversion information.https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29739367-post1030.html

There is a glimmer of hope as Lurker last update was soon we will have that information. It is under question 35.

35. Could you further clarify this new update on the refund of the Marriott Travel Package Cert, as to how the refund points are calculated? Reason this is in need of clarification is, currently if a member decides to refund the cert, the points returned on a Cat 1 to 5 is only 45,000 pts, not even enough for 2 Cat 5 nights at current charts.So hopefully we will know how Marriott will handle this. Though I would not hold my breath for it to come soon as we have been told Marriott will announce new hotel category charts in June. It even released some teaser examples about how some hotels categories will change.
Yet we are now on June 20th, and we are still waiting for the said information that is promised to be available in June.

I am also afraid that with the repeated speculations made by the blogger, Marriott may just opt to take the direction this blogger claims being the least likely path just to show who is the real boss in this game.

Personally I think replacing existing floater certs with the new certs with the same categories the old ones mapped to, would be the most fair approach as many of us actually would prefer to use the certs for actual hotel stays, and not a "vehicle" to get cheaper miles. I dont believe Marriott would refund unrestricted points to replace the canceled certs but that is what the blogger wants to speculate, as it would be a "potential Huge Win"... I doubt Marriott would let that happen even if it originally may have contemplate such mechanism but now would not play into the directiin of blogger speculation.

So if I have 450k Marriott points and am intereated in maximizing the miles portion of the travel package should I get the lowest category possible or the highest?

I also have the option of transferring the required Chase points in to complete 2x cat 1-5 travel packages.
please help!

Do you think it matters whether you cancel now, or cancel after August?
If you cancel now, you'll have a floater certificate right now. If you cancel after August, you'll have a floater certificate then.

All we know for sure is, if you hold a floater certificate come August, it'll be converted to points (whatever value).

What we don't know for sure, is what happens when you cancel a reservation after August, which causes your certificate to be come a "floater" again. I would hope Marriott would automatically convert the certificate at time of cancellation to whatever value they determined in August.

Does my reasoning make sense? Or was there something discussed in the past few hundred posts that makes my assumption incorrect?

We dont know that for sure either..

What's the difference between a "floater" and an "unused certificate"?

At various points in time throughout the year, I have three kinds of certificates sitting in my account: 7-night Category 5 certificates (Travel Packages), 1-night Category 5 credit card certificates (2 per year), and 1-night Category 4 or 5 Megabonus certificates (varies...usually a couple per year). They all look the same in my account - just unused certificates. The only difference being that I know I can always upgrade the TP one to the appropriate category as I call to attach it to a stay, whereas I currently cannot on the other types.

What will happen to your normal unused certificates (non-TP) is more clear and is spelled out within the Marriott FAQ.

https://members.marriott.com/faq/#i-...a-after-august

Personally, I don't think the SPG Lurker's comments necessarily fall outside of the above definition.

For example, if you have a Category 9 certificate, you can currently use it for 7 nights at a category 9 hotel. With a free night this comes out to 270,000 points for the 6 nights x 45k/night. If they can provide certificates of 25k value for the free night on the Marriott certificate, they can clearly provide certificates of 270k (just includes additional digits). Like the free night certs, it'd be easy for them to make these non-refundable (so you can't simply cancel and get 270k points). So in Aug you'd get a 270k certificate (maybe it as a minimum stay requirement of 7 nights, maybe it doesn't but has to be used as a single reservation). Then if you want to upgrade the certificate you pay the difference just like you do now. For any amounts that don't map to a new point class they would just issue the cert for the category lower and issue a refund of the points difference. So in the case of a current Cat 9, they'd map you to a category 5 in the new chart and refund 60k points (10k/night). You could then use those 60k points + 30k more to upgrade to a Cat 6 cert if desired.

I think a scenario like the above could absolutely labeled as "converting to equivalent points" and is infinitely more likely. In the same way they don't cancel the other free nights and instead convert them to a certificate of equivalent points, it simply doesn't make sense to refund actual points on the TPs alone.

SPG Lurker confirmed that "Floater certificates, including outstanding Marriott Travel Packages, will be cancelled and converted to equivalent points, credited to the member’s account for future redemption"

SPG Lurker specification said that TPs will be cancelled and converted to points though, and not an "update" certificate.

I would actually welcome that. I have a 7night cat1-5 certificate and a separate points booking for 3 nights in a premium room that totals 90k points. I'd be happy to use my cert for 3 premium nights. I could make use of 7 nights in a cat 1-5 hotel, but would need the expiry date extending and the trip would purely be to use the cert rather than being a trip I need/want to make. The premium booking is part of a trip I definitely want to make.

Or did I misunderstand your proposal/suggestion?

Your scenario seems plausible, but it would have a major gap: Cat 1-5. Unless they issue a 150K certificate to be spent on 7 nights with no refund for the difference.