Added Value Needed
 

Have been loyal Marriott supporter for many, many years. Achieved Life plat long ago under initial requirements. Ability to earn points has remained constant seemingly forever with rate of points per dollar/Marriott CC. On the other hand, have seen continual deterioration/removal of availability of award choices and escalation of hotel categories. Promotions have been decreasing as well. So the bottom line seems to be your earning power continues to remain the same per night but the cost to use your points continually increases.

Should we not see a 15 point per dollar rate with credit card?

that's a question to ask Chase, not MR.

No. MR points aren't the real measure. The real measure is the relationship of hotel stays and what you buy on the CC to how much of that it takes to redeem for a free room, which is expressed in MR points earned. If the cost of what is purchased increases, and the dollar cost of the hotel rooms used for redemption increases, the points earned per dollar spent must remain constant. If the points per dollar spent on the credit card were to increase while what they represent, items purchased (not dollars spent on items purchased - in other words, not $1.00 spent, but a widget purchased) also increases, purchasing items would become more rewarding. Each widget you purchase would get you closer to a free hotel night than it previously did. You would need to purchase fewer widgets to get a free hotel night. Let me explain....

• When it comes to hotel stays, taking anything other than basic points awarded per stay out of the equation, let's assume an average stay used to be $100/night. That would mean 1k points/night. If a hotel redemption cost 30k points/night at the time, it would take 30 nights to earn the stay.
  
• If that same hotel night now costs $150/night, due to inflation, the same night at the same hotel in the bullet point above would now only take 20 nights to earn.
  
• If the cost of what the points are being earned for and the cost of the awards room are both going up, the number of points needed for redemption will also need to increase so that all three, points earned - cost of the award to the hotel and points redeemed - are increasing consistently: but the currency used to express this, Marriott Rewards, needs to remain consistent. Changing points earned changes the currency used to measure.
  
• Put another way, without increasing categories, we would be earning points in 2015 value, the hotel would be incurring 2015 costs when we redeem but you would be asking the hotel to keep the redemption in 2010 values.
  
• Applying this to the specific quesiton asked about CCs, the cost of what you are buying are also increasing, so the points earned purchasing the same items are increasing. It does not make sense that the price of what you purchase with those points, which also go up, remain flat. Nor does it make sense that as the prices of these things increase, and the number of items you need to purchase to get a free night remains constant, you should be given more points so that you need to purchase fewer widgets to get to a free night.

Understandably, this is more of a problem for those that bank points for years trying to earn a big reward. The target keeps moving farther away and it's not like the points earned three years ago are invested and earning interest. But that's not really who frequent flyer programs are primarily aimed at, and it's also why points experts always stress you should spend your points, rather than save them. For those who are earning 250k+ MR points per year, the inflation is less of an issue because points earned/redeemed tend to be closer together, so we are less likely to have the issue of points being earned in one currency but being spent in an inflated currency.

It's pretty much the same relationship that causes the price of eggs to go up when the price of gas increases. While a dollar remains a dollar, when the price of eggs goes up, the cost of getting them to the supermarket increases, plus the egg producer has to pay his employees more so they can afford gas. The result is the price of the eggs go up because the price of gas goes up. A dollar is still a dollar, but the value of what is bought and sold with dollars changes. It's the same with hotel rooms and points. When the hotel room and what is purchased with the points increase, the currency, in this case MR points earned since it's based on the dollars spent, remains constant.

Once in a while there are "large" program wide changes that result in major point valuation changes. For example, does anyone remember when Marriott consolidated all their various brand programs into the single Marriott Rewards program? Before that, they had a single 200K award that included 7 nights at ANY Marriott hotel in the world, 2 airline tickets to get to that hotel plus an 8 day Hertz car rental (and I do believe they threw in a long distance calling card with minutes to call home with.) They quickly changed that award to the current TP award due to how easy it was to now rack up Marriott points (stays at all Marriott hotels now counted rather than just the FS Marriott hotels.)

There used to not be any CC points earnings. And then when Marriott first partnered with Chase to get a branded CC, there wasn't a Premium card earning 5/2/1 pts/$ only a base user card earning 3/1 pts/$. And the sign-up bonuses weren't close to 80K back then.

So basically it was a lot harder than today to rack up a lot of points. Today, even though Marriott doesn't have as many trading partners as some of the other hotel programs might have, they still have a lot more avenues to earning points than they used to.

We tend to glorify the "old" days of those 200K awards, but forget that very few people were really able to get the points needed for that award and even for those it usually would take a long time to earn it. It used to take me about a year to earn the 200K needed for that award. Today, if I focused all my hotel stays with Marriott, given all the earnings options, I could easily get a TP award plus be well on my way to another TP award if I want to stay at a Cat 5 or 6 hotel rather than a higher category hotel. So in reality, my true earnings is about the same.

So is it possible that Marriott might someday raise the points/$ earnings on one or more of their branded CCs? Sure it is. They did it with the advent of the Premium card, they might do it again in some future point. BUT, it probably won't be to just allow us to earn more points. It will be in conjunction with some other source of revenue change (i.e. high Annual fee or luxury card) or program devaluation. So in reality I'm not expecting and don't really want them to do it as it will most likely mean a devaluation of the overall program in some way for us is also in the works.

I would have to do some work to look it up, there was an award for about 400K, that included two 10 day hotel certificates and 4 airlines tickets (coach) good for travel between any two destinations, and some car rental stuff. Most airlines, they gave you a certificate, but for United (for a time) they gave you miles. If you specified you wanted to fly from LHR to SYD (largest points at that time) they gave you something like 120K points *4. I personally turned in about 4 of these over time.

You're right, of course, in that you only earned 10 points per dollar and there was no CC at first. I can't remember how I amassed so may points so long ago (other than the fact that I spent a lot of BIB), but I did buy one MVCI unit back then.

Anyway, it was a heck of a deal.

Billy

450K I do believe was the cost. And yes, it was a very nice deal. You are also correct in that at least for some airlines they gave "certificates" to use. I used it for Northwest and received the certs which I had to call a special number to use. But they were good to/from anywhere NW flew.

There was one period where every room-night, after some threshold (which varied by person), was worth a 10,000 point bonus. A friend got a lot of tickets to Australia that way (he found a hotel with a $40 weekend rate, and you could book a second room for $20, so $60 for 20,000 points, or $600 for 2 tickets plus a week in a Marriott plus car rental).

I remember that bonus. It was definitely a long time ago. ;)

My mother had a 3 week stay back then in Wichita if I remember correctly . I was able to get her signed up and with that one stay, she had more than enough points for the 200K award (7 nights at any hotel, 2 airline tickets anywhere in the world, 8 day Hertz car rental.) Now that was a good promo. :cool:

But inflation causes all prices (hotel and purchases) to rise, which means more points earned on the same items.

I try to measure points/miles based on how much value I receive from them for my normal award uses (as compared to what I would have spent on some sort of reasonably comparable hotel if I'd had to use cash). On earning side I do the same: estimate how I realistically earn points, including all promotions, over time.

IMHO, Marriott has *reasonably* held the line over the years on the overall redemption value equation. There has been a little leakage due to category creep and a little due to weaker promotions. But nothing nearly as bad as HHonors (two major systemwide devaluations in 5 years) or Starwood (which had a huge fraction of the program value baked into promotions and then all but eliminated the best ones).

On the plus side, redeeming Marriott has genuinely gotten easier since they eliminated the two-tier availability structure.

I don't think hotel programs (or airline programs for that matter) will ever be what they were in the early years of the programs. I believe I personally benefited from a solid decade-plus of participation in MR (and HH) before hotel programs were widely talked about or prominently advertised. Most of my traveling friends were more likely to give an AA or UA number to a hotel clerk until the early 2000's. That meant a lot of non-participating guests were subsidizing the participating ones, and the cost of the program in terms of total award rooms redeemed was fairly manageable.

Now everybody plays the game (granted, some better than others), and there's less of this "knowledge arbitrage" opportunity available for anyone.