I think this is too strong. Marriott has been very generous with the TPs. You take your own risk managing the legacy TP. Personally I do not think the TPs ever lose value as stipulated in the original T&C. Marriott is not held beyond that.

Pls do not blame Marriott if you hoarding MR points and blaming MR for not able to book the St. Regis Bora Bora all suite at 60,000 MRs. They are people's wild dreams. Possible, but rather remote.

So much speculations over the internet. Take them with a huge grain of salt.

There are 4 Marriott Vacation Club properties from old Cat-8 to new Cat-7. But they are not bookable (low availability) and almost all require upgrade certificates. They are all 2-bedroom or 3-bedroom properties.

No regular hotels that you can book.

per the TPG list (spreadsheet you can sort/filer) - 4 properties go from Cat 8 to new Cat 7, but as mentioned above, not bookable.

There are exactly 4 properties, all MVC in Hawaii, none of them have any award availability for entire booking horizon, so no way to book a stay currently for points.

To help set expectations, MVCI properties are not hotels and award availability is very different than with a hotel award. In general, for Marriott to be able to offer award availability, a week owner has to trade that week in to Marriott for points. At some locations this occurs much more frequently than in others (and also can very depending on seasons.) Given the cost to purchase a week in Hawaii, I wouldn't think very many owners would be lining up to trade their weeks in for points. Not when they can probably rent it for significantly more than the points they would get from Marriott are worth.

And note that I love using points at MVCI properties and have stayed at many of them using TP awards (including Hawaii.) But you have to be very patient and flexible in most cases due to the limited nature of award availability at those locations.

Wow. This is one of the most active threads I've ever seen on FT. The last one was 2 years ago when CSR with 100k bonus. ;)

I never read a single post on that thread. But I still get the CSR with 100k. Say I get the luck. :p

Uncertainty drives curiosity.

thanks for clarifying, I wasn't trying to imply they are never bookable, but not easy to find currently, so long shot to get a reservation to hold a week in the next 3 days for those properties.

There aren't any changes. Just unsubstantiated rumor mongering. CSRs are not to be trusted, and I can't believe people are taking a FT post as fact. Do we honestly believe a CSR would be telling members TP information before its been publicly released? I'm not buying that certs will be downgraded. My money is on 60% chance remapped to similar CATs, 40% chance Marriott IT fails in its conversion efforts and they just refund value of the TPs (They've already had to push back TPs now 1.5 months past Aug 1).

I just spoke with a rep and she said the system to upgrade or downgrade certs (or buy a package) is down til after 8/18.

Had no problems 2 hours ago on the UK number, 2 packages upgraded, friendly irish agent know exactly what to do total call time under 5 minutes.

Hang up and try another rep or call centre.

Just called into 1-866-814-6901, wait time was ~20 minutes. Rep was a bit rude ... but booked a 7N stay in Maui. Took 3 minutes.

Went for the Wailea Beach Resort, Maui, Category 8 for early Jan 2019. Fri-Fri stay.
Hoping this was the right move ! :)

You could do 2x, but your forfeit rate on the 2nd cert would be really low. Not enough to get you to Hawaii.

Do you regularly earn a lot of points? If I felt like I could earn myself back to a higher category within the span of a few months, I'd probably still redeem 2 right now because the value is so much worse after the Aug 18. But if that pins you down to new Cat 4 and your goal is Hawaii in the next year, that doesn't help you too much.

Maybe... it depends on what the final solution is. If they drop all old TP certs to new cat 1-4 certs and refund the difference in points that is huge devaluation and is shady. It's shady because that would be easy to have communicated back in June when the other stuff rolled out and to upgrade the certs to the new levels is astronomically more expensive. If they follow through on what they've said and map them to similar levels then I agree it is too strong. I have an idea of what I would personally like but realistically as long as the value (say 40k points a night) is not dropped to 25k or something this will not get as much complaining as the "SPG can't make LTPP" thread did in late April.

The downgrade to Cat 1-4 (old Cat1-5) is not huge devaluation. It returns the value it was and it has been. The Cat 1-5 TP total cost is about 270,000 MRs, with the 7-day hotel just 45,000 MR allocation. So it is 7,500 MR/day for the certificate. This is a huge deal.

The downgrade to new Cat 1-4 just returns your original pints to you. You do not gain or lose any points. It is fair to anyone. So MR does not need to do the mapping.

Certainly this is going to downgrade or damage some people's aspiration of huge upside. This is like going to the casino. The house returns your chips to you. I do not think you can cry foul about it.