Cat 9 can't be a bigger loser then Tier 1-3. Tier 1-3 paid 30K more for access to the same, when previously tier 1-3 had access to everything cat 9 had and more.

Not entirely fair to only include Marriott properties and not SPG properties in this - You could argue (from Marriott's side) that the increase in cost/"devaluation" is more than made up for by including a LOT more hotels. Yes, you do lose some that were matched to a category not covered anymore (same as, e.g. a random mid-year category-upgrade for a property), but on the upside you get a TON of properties from the SPG portfolio now included that before were all not-included. (e.g. they went from Category "X" to now having an MR-redeemable category)

At least I'm sure that's how Marriott would justify it. Higher cost for much larger freedom of choice.

So really, if you bought a Category 1-5 + 132,000 package (like I did), you made out just fine? Not being able to upgrade it is unfortunate, but otherwise I got some value out of doing it pre-merger.

Can't argue with that. My analysis only focuses on the original category hotels, where Cat9 lost a higher percentage of coverage than T3 (24% vs 18%).

What it misses is lower categories that hopped over the higher category - such as this case 24% of old Cat9's became new Cat7's, meaning the T3 certs also lost some of old Cat9 hotels it had coverage of. Conversely in this case it also misses old T3 hotels that became Cat6 (82%), that add higher valued hotel coverage to converted Cat9s.

I think the most apples to apples comparison is what portion of the originally bookable hotel set remains, but could see it sliced and evaluated in a different manner.

Yes, the Cat 1-5 was the only guaranteed "no lose" proposition pre-8/18. In fact, the 2 TPs I bought were Cat 1-5; I didn't want to gamble on what Marriott would consider "fair" or "equivalent." Truly ultra-conservative choice that provided exactly what was expected.

Here is that table, which I originally made and have quoted several times during the "give everyone a Cat1-4 and points refund" proposal. This includes all hotels before and after (SPG wouldn't be bookable before) such that the population hasn't changed.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a511375787.png

What I'm referring to is a comparison/claim by Marriott that will surely be something like this (fill in the blanks for each category):

Before August, with the old Cat1-5TP, you had X hotels bookable.
In September, with the converted new Cat1-4TP, you have Y hotels bookable.

Y will most likely be bigger than X for all categories (at least I would guess that), simply because you get so many more hotels bookable with the addition of the SPG portfolio. I don't believe the graph above shows that, since I think in both tables you've only included "remapped" hotels and not "new" ones?

Agree, that would be right up there with your newly converted Cat6 cert has "value up to 30k".

I was missing a summation of new category hotels in each chart, but one could do that comparison. Since that changes the population, that is a slippery slope. I'll spare the continued spaming of images and leave the old/new counts for new cat4 and above as: +245, +183, +62, +99, +50. I also noticed I missed the 90k properties, but that doesn't really change anything.

Not sure what you are referring to as 'new' properties. I haven't seen any new properties coming online since June, only leaving.

EXACTLY.

The Marriott's claim of using peak pricing as the equivalent of the points equivalent to what you have paid for is complete BS.

I would urge those who are screwed, CALL Marriott despite the long hold (that is what your speaker phone is for!) voice your complaint and request the refund whether succeeded or not, you make the company know instead of waiting out the bogus lock down month which I suspect is needed to do manual conversion because it does not make sense to spend loads of IT resources to handle a one time event when the legacy certs are very complicated (newly redeemed, extended once, extended twice, partial, upgrade / downgrade, all sorts of garden varieties, 7 nights, 5 nights and there even different value of the same type due to their screw up in the processing - so my bet is they would do MANUAL conversion on each account that has unattached certs - that is why it would take this long. If IT is ready to do that there is NO REASON why it needs a month's lock down.

Call to get yourself whole instead of waiting for Marriott's "do the right thing." They will not unless being pressed by you, who are being cheated.

Yes. book it as point reward stay and you dont even need to have enough points - Marriott has been allowing this type of redemption that you dont have enough pts but want to lock in the availability. You have up to 10 days before stay to submit instrument to pay for it - whether it is cert or points. Else the reservation would turn into a pay stay reservation or being cancelled.

That is what I do on Sunday when the hotel booking function was finally coming back. I also wanted to book it without the SPG pts being moved over (yesterday afternoon I saw they were in my account in 2 lines transactions that I had NEVER initiated - thankfully they were gone from Marriott and back in SPG account). The Less fiddling of CSR on my reservation the Less chances of something being screwed up. I just want an award ressie in place and once the lock down is over, call to attach my cert.

Here's why I think people are overreacting when they complain that they can't book the property they had in mind: if you had sat down and made the math on a piece of paper, taking into account what was known at the time, you would've made the right decision regarding which certificate to get. This is not hindsight, this is just math.

Basically here was the required train of thoughts:
1. How much will the property cost after the merger? This had been announced weeks ago for each property on this page: https://points-redemption.marriott.com/category-change
2. Based on this rate, what is the next category up in the old award chart? In other words, what category in the old award chart would be enough to cover that rate? (you didn't even have to worry about on peak / off peak rates, just the standard rate)

People who followed this very simple and logical thought process picked the right certificate in 100% of cases (by right certificate, I mean that whatever category they went with for their package can still be used today to book the property they were after).

People who lost access to the properties they had in mind were the ones who were hoping for Marriott to be unnecessarily generous by rounding the categories up rather than down. This was always based on unsubstantiated rumors circulated on blogs and was always a gamble.

I was personally going to do that gamble, thinking if it doesn't pay off I'll just upgrade my certificate. Then when SPG Lurker announced that you will not be able to upgrade certificates anymore, I realized the gamble wasn't worth the risk anymore and immediately upgraded my certificate up to the correct category.

Don't get me wrong, there are many things Marriott could've done better in this whole ordeal, and some of the criticism is justified. But if you're complaining that the property you were eyeing can't be booked with your certificate anymore, that's on you, not on Marriott, because the official information known at the time was enough to make the correct decision.

Fully agree on this. Not being able to upgrade certificates anymore is in my opinion one of the things that Marriott can fairly be criticized on, especially since the only advanced warning regarding this new policy was a message by SPG Lurker on FT. If there had been, say, an email sent to certificates holder informing them of this change beforehand then I would have been more accepting of this, but the complete lack of communication was baffling.

And I do agree that going back on this policy and allowing people to upgrade their new certificates would generate good will at no cost. I can understand not allowing people to downgrade certificates since in many cases that would mean a massive point refund, but not allowing people to upgrade certificates makes no sense to me.

I had three old Cat 7 (New Cat 5) certs and one old Cat 5 (New Cat 4). So I guess I'm a winner. I up/down-graded my certs to those categories one day before the deadline because I was hoping for a conversion chart leak/announcement, lacking of which, it was the safest bet that matched the level of hotels I wanted to stay at.

I attached them to hotels that were moving to New Cat 6 and New Cat 5, hoping for a loophole/glitch/goodwill that will allow me to receive certs in those categories if I cancel or change the dates of my reservation after the certificate conversion is completed.