No Blackout Dates? Not Really.
 

Well, now that the resort properties are finally loading their rates into the system for the 2009-2010 year-end holiday season, the other shoe of the MR "enhancement" program has dropped.

Despite all the big deal about eliminating blackout dates, the fine print says that properties may indeed limit the number of standard rooms that they make available for award stays. Just tried booking the JW in Phuket for Christmas week...plenty of rooms available (albeit at 20,000 baht/night, nonrefundable) but no award rooms.

I am now even more happy that I burned 770k points on travel packages before January 14th.

It was clear when MI originally announced the changes. Blackout dates were gone - that is, those dates where there were no rooms available at all - and at least a limited number of rooms would be available every day of the year.

To the best of my memory, it was never presented that an unlimited number of rooms would be available. Here's what the Marriott Web Site says:
(emphasis added)

I'm sorry if you confused "no more blackout dates" with "unlimited availability" but there was never a guaranty that if there was a room you would be able to use points for the room.

I continue to be surprised at the number of travelers that think MR actually did much with the new policy other than jacking up the number of points for stays, especially week-long, high category properties (30-40% devaluation of my points).

The "no blackouts" was a smokescreen to the devaluation, making people think that the SPG "if a room is available, you can redeem it with points" (yes, I know there are exception, Mr. Pedant) policy applied when in reality it meant "if you log in early on the Sunday morning between 51 weeks and 51 weeks 6 days of your desired stay, you might get the one room available for points, if you beat the others trying the same thing".

That's why I'm current at SPG 17, MR 2 this year.

20,000 THB per night. OK it is a very nice property, but not that nice :(

I wouldn't be too hard on anyone who reads Marriotts "Program Enhancement" notices and comes away misunderstanding this point. Remember, they are making changes to bring their program more closely aligned with their competitors, like SPG. And SPG does talk about having No Blackout dates AND they include the 'last standard room available at all times' verbage.

Basically, I'm thinking that Marriott wants people to make this mistake. They will jump over, and then have their foot in the door with Marriott. By the time they find out otherwise, they probably will have put in a lot of effort, nights/stays at Marriotts and won't want to lose that. IOW, they will stay with Marriott even though it wasn't what they originally thought.

CJ I think you are being unfair to the OP by creating a false dichotomy between no blackout dates and unlimited availability (attributing the latter position to the OP). I read and reread DFW DL's post and I do not see evidence that they thought it was suppose to be unlimited availability (which implies they'll even give you an award night after they are already fully booked).

I believe if you go back and look at the language of the announcement by Marriott with language like our calendar is wide open and touting the enhancements it sure did sound like there was going to be a lot more availability than in the old program. And you may recall that Marriott Concierge (sincerely I believe) posted that any time there were standard rooms available there had to be a significant number of award rooms available (I'll try to find it and link to the exact language). There were suppose to be only a handful of properties that were allowed to further restrict award room availability and these were still suppose to be easier to book award rooms than before. It sure sounded to me (and I don't think I was the only one) like this new system was going to allow one to book an award room about 98-99% of the time a standard room was bookable.

I have not had to look for award nights much since January. Are you yourself seeing that it is a lot easier to book your award nights for your preferred nights this year than it has been in past years?

Again-the "look what I can do"chimps in suits have caused nothing but disgrace for this once fine brand by "cleverly"wording their new campaign so that loyal Marriott customers will be told a devaluation is an enhancement.

Do they not realize that once folks catch on to their game that folks will be angry and not willing to go beyond their anger.Is this really what Marriott International intended?I am going to be generous here and hope that they were sold a bill of worthless goods by these chimps in suits and unfortunately cannot see how to get out of this mess gracefully.

The time for a gracefull solution might be past-but someone coming forward(perhaps that someone needs to be a Marriott)and saying-"we made a mistake,our mistake has caused our customers to lose faith with us,we will now have to work to regain our customers trust and faith"Hard to be that honest--but in my opinion that is what needs to happen.

Marriott has many fine folks working for them.I miss those folks very much.They should not have to be punished for someone elses dishonest dealing.

You mischaracterized what I wrote. It was the OP that created the false dichotomy that either he could get a room or there were blackout dates. He ignored the possibility that the rooms available for points had already been taken.

The OP tried to get a room for points. He could not get the room. The hotel had availability for pay. The OP, in his title, concluded that this meant Marriott still had blackout days. Obviously he thinks if there are rooms available that the policy requires he be allowed to use points.

He doesn't allow the possibility that the few rooms that were set aside for points might have already been reserved, which is allowed within the new policy. This is quite different than blackout days being eliminated, which the OP states in his title. Had he believed the rooms available for points had already been taken, he would have griped about there not being enough rooms offered. He wouldn't have claimed there were actually blackout days.

I'm not quite sure how the conclusion "No Blackout Dates? Not Really" could be supported otherwise. The OP obviously thinks the fact that he could not get a reservation on the dates he wanted meant there were blackout dates, as opposed to reservations already made that took the rooms that were available.

My post was meant to refute the OP's dichotomy. (Either I get a room or there are blackout days.) I cannot see any way his title is supported without his dichotomy. Do you?

Deliberate obfuscation, no matter how you sugar coat it or apologize for them.

Marriott achieved exactly what it set out to in regards to the OP's complaint. Make them believe a positive has occurred when in reality, contrary to common sense and hidden behind legal disclaimers and gotcha's, a negative has occurred.

What about the other 99% of the non-point 'ho's out there - do you think they are up for a rude awakening when trying to take advantage of the new "enhancements".

I, for one, knew it was too good to be true from day one. But too stupid to do anything about it other than jump ship in 2009 because of this and the CL downgrade nightmare.

I find the changes to be pretty much a wash, but I gotta say, I personally have found availability to be somewhat better at the high-demand properties I've been looking at. For the most part, my take is that Marriott is trying to do the right thing...although some of the cost-cutting is becoming a really serious concern for me.

Yeah ... and profit hemhorraging is becoming a serious concern for Marriott, too.

We know that Marriott actually owns/runs very few of their properties. For an individual hotel, working harder to attract/maintain customers for when the inevitible turnaround occurs is a bit fuzzy compared with their situation today. So, cut costs no matter what is sort of the order of the day.

I think the same mentality is in place in Hilton, SPG, Hyatt, all down the line. I hear rumors of SPG being generous and so on, but I believe the reality is we're all in for a rough ride.

For me, I try not to whine like I used to.

But it's hard. :)

I have pretty much been staying with SPG this year. What is interesting about their approach is that they are adding to the benefits of their program (i.e. lower points costs, more bonuses, etc) while the individual hotels are finding ways to cut costs. I've noticed that I only get 2 daily packages of Starbucks coffee left in the room instead of three. They are only leaving 1 bottle of water where some hotels used to leave 2. And the hotels with lounges are cutting some of their variety of food offerings down a notch or two (but the Sheraton I've been staying at still has a better morning breakfast and evening snack offerings than most US based Marriotts used to have.)

So its interesting to see the different approaches by the different companies. Where Marriott is cutting back in both program benefits and hotel costs, others are adding to the program benefits and cutting back hotel costs.

Looking at award availability for various NYC properties over a spring weekend, I'd say that Starwood and Hilton have much more honest understandings of "no blackout dates" than Marriott does. For Starwood and Hilton, if there is an available room for cash, there is also one for points. Not so for Marriott.

As long as you did your search on a property by property basis, then your results and complaint are valid.

However, if you did a city-wide search for award availability on marriott.com there is a known issue of award availability not showing up when in fact there is actually availability. This has been a known bug since the October 2007 IT downgrade. For some reason Marriott IT just can't seem to comprehend much less correct this problem.

Yes, property-by-property. Specifically, for one weekend, lot of cash availability for the Renaissance Times Square but no award availability.