For what it is worth
Last year I redeemed points towards a cruise at the following formula
145000 points for a $ 1000,-- spent checking for this year it has gone up to
190000 points for a $ 1000,-- to be spent . I find this to be a sizeable increase and I am strongly considering cancelling Marriott/Chase card
I am investigating recommendations for another card with a bigger bang!
I am retired - fly for family visits and for vacations
Thanks for your comments

I stayed at Sonoma Marriott 2 years ago with points: it was a category 6.
Just checked recently, it is now a category 7. I am not aware of any renovation that may have taken place recently. So that's a 17% increase in points to be redeemed, for no added benefits

You shouldn't be redeeming Marriott points for things other than Marriott (or Ritz) hotel stays. In general hotel and airline programs offer poor value for redeeming with other companies. The only real exception is for transfers such as SPG allowing transfers to loads of airlines.

I think the 190,000 points for a 1K cruise cert is exactlyt he same now as the 190K points for a Marriott gift card.

Neither are a good deal.

The travel package deal is a great use too. Especially if you can take advantage of a transfer bonus.

Categories are based on a number of factors. Geography, demand, and award demand. Some fallout from the Cat 4 Megabonus is the influx of people seeking the best cat 4 hotels. After the first year, a bunch of those properties were catapulted to category 5.

Your property may have a lot of award demand.

Yeah that makes sense but then how to explain when an entire new higher reward category is created and the annual shifting of properties where the number of upwards far exceeds the downshifting. If it was simple supply & demand between properties, it would be a zero sum game.

Marriott has to book a liability and record an expense based upon the number of outstanding points and annually inflating point redemption cost helps them mitigate that expense.

Its all funny money...

Your $100 room that earned you 1000 points several years ago may now be $150, earning 1500 points, but the same in terms of purchasing power based on inflation. 20 of those nights today can buy you a 30K point room today vs. a 20K point room, een though you spent the same amount in adjusted dollars.

Either the points per category need to go up with inflation or properties need to jump up categories roughly in line with inflation.

In a non-zero-inflation world, trends in category changes will always go up.

Yes, and yours and the previous posts just prove that inflation happens both to points and money. Which begs the question: Why do people find it so unusual that point inflation occurs? It's just another currency like any other. Where is the anger over 50%-100% increase in room rates over the past 5 years. Probably because we all know inflation happens. Well it happens to points too.

However, to the OP: it has been 190000 points for a $1000 gift check for years. Not a good use of points IMO. Now there was a Platinum Elite award that ended on Dec 31, 2012 that gave Plats $1000 gift check for 145000 points. But that is not inflation, just the end of a special Plat award.

In general, points are subject to inflation. This is not a gradual process but one that happens every few years and as such is very noticeable and gains the ire of many elite members. This is not unique to Marriott or the hotel industry. With currency it happens very slowly over time, thus less of a shock, but the rate of currency inflation is equal to, if not greater than, that of points over the long term.

BTW, I have posted this before. Generally Marriott follows others in their point inflation. Prior to Marriott's last major devaluation on Jan 15, 2009, both Hilton and SPG did their major devaluations a year earlier. I anticipate major changes will happen again in the latter half of this decade. Until then all hotel chains will change category levels of their hotels based on the requisite factors, in Marriott's case the number of awards redeemed.

Both sound arguments except for inflation has been minimal / non-existent for many years now and what hotels charge is what they can get away with in a market with little resemblance to underlying costs.

Some properties go up 5,000 points every year or 20% (from 25,000 to 30,000).

The hotels I stay at regularly where I am earning are not increasing their rates by 20% annually or our corporate contract would be placed elsewhere!

Not disagreeing that point inflation is normal & needed but its hard to make a broad brush comparison and it rarely breaks even for the point holder, if ever!

For 360,000 points you can get seven nights in a Cat 8 Marriott plus 120,000 airline miles. And I've checked recently and there are some 60,000 Delta tickets out there. If you calculate he hotel room as worth $400 per night and the airline tickets at $1,200 each, that brings your total value to $5,200.

Seems a waste to spend all those points to get two measly cruise certificates. If they go up in price enough that you won't buy them Marriott is doing you a favor.

You are underestimating the effect of inflation. A large driver is the relatively weak US Dollar. Bernanke's easy monetary policy has led to a strong euro versus the greenback. Since the point system is denominated in points per USD, the overall effect is higher room rates in terms of USD for overseas stays in Europe and hotels in Turkey that price in Euros. This causes the point production to go up. The USD has also weakened considerably against the Canadian Dollar, Australian Dollar, Korean Won, and Brazilian Real over the past five years. These are currencies in locations with a decent exposure of Marriott properties. Add in an increased number of Marriott credit cards, and you have the supply of points growing much faster than the RevPar increase for hotels in the US.

I don't see a good future for the Marriott Rewards program under such circumstances.

No, as most have pointed out, this is a very poor use of one's points but is par for the course for any frequency program when you redeem such currency for items that are not within the program's specific bailiwick.