And many SPG members get 5 nights per year through the SPG-branded American Express credit card, meaning they only need 45 nights per year to get platinum status. That's still significantly less than Marriott.

The promo ran until six months ago, not a year ago and does impact Plats. I've witnessed it. The impact will be felt for a year from now. Those who don't travel to Asia cannot imagine the impact. Some CLs required reservations for some time and might still. Think the NYC Marquis if ten times the number of people presently using the lounge now wanted to use the lounge. And pardon my saying this, but the attitude of entitlement many of these non-frequent hotel guests who were not used to a CL brought into the lounges only made it worse. There were staff people I knew from before who were obliviously stressed by the unexpected huge response to this promo. The impact is beyond what anyone who hasn't witnessed this could imagine.

and credit card $3K nights
and rollover nights
and phantom meeting nights

We can go round and round on it...same argument holds for 500 LT SPG nights vs. 750 MR for LTP.

There were also far fewer Starwood hotels (and the brand had a ~15% higher ADR, per 2016 stats, so one typically spent more), so one had to be "extra loyal" to choose Starwood over larger chains.

Fair point, wasn't thinking specifically of lounges.

Seems to me like 18 nights in 3 months for SPG Plat is at least as hard as 9 stays in 3 months (or really 4) for Marriott Plat. So who's flooding whom? FWIW, I'm doing the Marriott challenge right now, primarily to get Plat to use at good foreign SPG properties in hopes of suite upgrades. A secondary benefit is the United status, which might score me some econ+ upgrades. The difference between Marriott Gold, which I already have, and Marriott Platinum, wouldn't have been worth bothering with on its own. So I think any complaints are more validly made in the opposite direction from what OP asserts. (That said, I ain't complaining either way!)

*shrug* Marriott isn't too far off...low 50's in terms of actual stayed nights. That's assuming you are only using your Marriott Visa at Marriott. (You can theoretically get MR Plat with 0 nights, although it'd cost you several thousand dollars in forgone rewards to do so.)

The bigger impact is Marriott Plats flooding into hotels that actually have a culture of upgrading SPG Platinum members. That is, hotels that have a decent amount of upgrade inventory to give and a stable of SPG Plats who are used to seeing those upgrades pretty regularly. That's a much bigger impact than a crowded lounge.

So many Marriotts are built with very few large suites. Thus, as a Marriott Plat/Gold for many years I've never expected many upgrades. High floor, C-level, bed/smoke right, good view...I'm happy if they just get that stuff right. But SPG has always been more of an upgrade-centric program, and in the future it won't be unless they formally recognize something like the Plat 100 level across all the brands as the "upgrade level".

Depends on when you stay. If you do 50% travel Mon-Thurs = 3 nights * 2 stays per month * 3 months, that's only six stays but 18 nights. If you were to switch properties every day, you could theoretically get the Marriott promo done within a month and a half.

As far as upgrades or whatever, I've done the match to SPG and I stayed there some nights last year before I did my homework and realized that the SPG nights were in a separate program and wouldn't count towards Marriott Lifetime night count or Lifetime status qualification (was Lifetime Gold, presently plat on the cusp of Lifetime plat). I switched back to Marriott for that reason in part, but another reason was that in North America, Marriott has a lot more locations than Starwood. The Delta location was much more convenient (Closer to where I needed to be) versus the nearest Starwood property.

Hard for me to say how valid the "SPG flooding Marriott" claim is since my travel was way down for 2016 & 2017, especially since I spent most of 2016 & 2017 in FS Marriott Properties without concierge lounges. I did generally get upgraded as a plat at properties that could offer the rooms in 2016 (I spent most of 2017 at a Delta that did not have any upgraded rooms of substance). So, hard to measure.

And FWIW, the 18 night challenge has some meat to it. That's a Plat-level stay pace in either program.

So many of you are also missing the point that the SPG status challenge would grant someone status to February 2020. That's also significant because until now all indications and reports were that Marriott would announce a new combined program sometime in 2018 that would begin in 2019. Extending status a full year past the potential start date of a new combined Marriott, Ritz-Carlton and SPG program strikes me as unusual, unless it's an indication that the combining of programs has been delayed.

Why would a respectable SPG Plat want to flood Marriott Club Lounge? A real SPG Plat would stay at SPG properties and enjoy the benefits while (s)he still can. Staying at Marriott to enjoy the overcrowded CL will only dilute the SPG Plat qualification effort.

I would only stay at a Marriott if that;s the only option where I'm going.

Enjoy your Sheraton.

Anybody who achieves elite status right now becomes elite through February 2020. That part is not unusual. I don't take it as any indication for or against the programs combining on January 1, 2019. I'm still loosely assuming they *will* combine on that date, although I'm not sure what actions I'd be taking if I knew for sure otherwise.

If that's your position, then you misstated this as 'SPG flooding Marriott' instead of 'SPG flooding Marriott Rewards'.

The "latest"? This challenge has been around for years.

And you're just flat wrong that it excludes existing Golds.

Otherwise your post is 100% spot on ;)

I think we all understood it as SPG Plats flooding Marriott hotels. Obviously, after taking the step to establish or link to their existing Marriott Rewards accounts.

I don't necessarily agree with the premise, but it's pretty clear that people here understood it.

Marriott is the bigger program. Marriott doesn't have *much* in the way of anything capacity-controlled to give to Plats, because it isn't an upgrade-centric program to begin with. If you're in a crowded lounge, you might think "it's the United Golds" or "it's the SPG Plats", but you don't really know. Going the other direction, where more Starwoods actually have some suites to give to their Plats, it's more plausible that the much larger pool of Marriott Plats could significantly impact the SPG Plat's ability to get an upgrade. They were a smaller group. They were used to getting upgraded. That perception actually *could* be reality, unless Starwood hotels are actively checking somehow to upgrade their "native" elites first. (I don't know if they can or do that or not.)