kgkg

Hi all, if I stay at a Starwood hotel in December, will that stay eventually count toward Marriott lifetime nights after the merge of both programs? Thanks!

Srisarin

asked and answered several dozen times - as of now, NO

mahasamatman

Nobody knows what the new program will look like, so nobody can confidently answer this question.

hhoope01

While technically, correct, I would think the most likely outcome is Marriott will combine all the lifetime points/nights from both programs when the programs themselves are merged. I do believe they have stated that they will continue to honor Lifetime statuses from each program after the merge, but they haven't said much beyond that.

Srisarin

If they were going to do this they could have easily stated it and instituted it over a year ago

CCIE_Flyer

How could they "easily" have done this, when there isn't yet a combined program to be awarded lifetime status into??

Rest assured that there will be a lifetime facet of the new program, and that Marriott has no intention whatsoever of wiping the slates of long-time loyal customers clean. The only legitimate question is what the new thresholds will look like (nights/points), and how progress towards those will be seeded starting out (e.g. how many new LT points are credited from a Marriott LT point vs an SPG one).

sdsearch

We don't even know for sure if there will be such a thing as "Marriott lifetime nights" in the new program. The new program might get a new name, the new program might not count lifetime nights (only lifetime years and/or lifetime stays and/or lifetime points and/or lifetime spend), no one really knows for sure.

CJKatl

These are each people with lots of experience with the Marriott program who are offering their personal guesses, which are informative but still just educated guesses...

But this is the only truly correct answer...

joshua362

I can sleep at night knowing that I'll have some sort of surviving LTP "title".

What bothers me, past, present and future is the wildly varying fulfilment quality of said earned "benefits" is subject to the whims of a FD clerk and how much a GM allows operationally to spend on the lounge.

Srisarin

It took Marriott one day to allow converting SPG to Marriott points. If they had wanted to combine LT nights/points they could have done it back then, but they didn't (for their own reasons) so why should they do it now as those reasons still exist?



Why should there be any as you haven't spent a dime at a Marriott but DEMAND all the benees ?

CCIE_Flyer

In the first place, it didn't take "one day" - significant background preparations led up to that ability (you obviously don't work in IT!). In answer to your question, it's simply because it fundamentally doesn't make sense to do so until there's a new, combined program. Why in the world go through all of the pain of that now, only to dissolve the existing LT programs in the near future when the combined program supersedes them?? Allowing for the transfer of points now, on the other hand, is an obvious mechanism to foster acceptance of the new paradigm.


Because when Marriott elected to acquire/combine with SPG, they accepted that they'd be taking on SPG's best, most loyal customers - and they'll be keen to retain that loyalty. I am a MM flyer with UA, and plenty of folks in that program never spent a "dime" on UA prior to the merger (having come over from CO). And if that was directed at me, personally, I have well north of 700 LT nights w/ Marriott - over 75 this year alone, in spite of having given the majority (150+ nights) of my business to SPG this year.

And the use of all-caps words like DEMAND is frankly uncalled for, all the more so given that absolutely no one in this thread has thus far done anything remotely of the sort.

Srisarin

and during all that preparation time don't you think the nights/points of SPGites merging with MRs wasn't brought up, and at that time, rejected/delayed/tabled for later discussion ?






This type of reply and attitude really makes me wish Anbang had been successful and is the same/similar of all those other SPG-lovers who have posted about the death of their beloved SPG program

JackE

It would take about one minute to say "Lifetime SPG is now Lifetime Marriott."

X-ON

Two reasons why it was not possible to add LT nights and LT points nights immediately:
(1) LT nights in MR and SPG are apples and oranges, MR can add roll-over and CC bonus nights etc. SPG is butt in bed nights
(2) There is no LT points in the SPG program and their IT system cannot track points accumulation for all accounts (older than 15Y)

... behind these differences there is a quite a big IT project in addition to the really big IT project the common reservation system...

CCIE_Flyer

Absolutely zero reason to do so, as yet. It might be that the new program will require a combined credited 1,000 nights/a billion stays/a trillion points - or any combination thereof. The question at hand is whether current nights (or stays, if you prefer) are ultimately going to be folded into that calculus?

The fact that an automatic LT match wasn't "immediately" implemented at the time status matches could take place, and points transfers were likewise allowed, is simply reflective of the order of magnitude of additional complexity.

Not everyone who stays in hotels often is capable of grasping these nuances, I fully get that. But by all means please at least make an effort to set hysteria aside, and stop jumping to completely unfounded conclusions (e.g. since they haven't done XYZ yet, most certainly they never, ever intend to or will be capable of!).

Tabled for later implementation, certainly. Yes. And with perfectly good computer scientific reason. It'll take a good bit more thought and work than the stuff already more or less easily done for the benefit of both constituencies.

Critical thinking is a wonderful thing!