Well, then you should be more concerned about all those credit cards handing out status and elite nights like 🍭.

For some of us (europe based members) promotions like this make a difference between beeing Titanium or Ambassador especially when having kids and beeing bound to school holidays.

Still no announcement today January 29. Speculation about type of Promo not so useful as do not control / influence , but timing more important ...started a thread about that, but deleted as convo went into wrong direction.

Yes, we all want to optimize / maximize value of our loyalty programs portfolio.
Simple to say that.
nd it can get complicated with more than one loyalty program, various types of benefits, etc.
You might want AI chatbots to help you. That simple stmt to maximize becomes complex when you get into the details , as AI responses will ask you for more details to define what is maximum and to put some "value" on benefits. Otherwise, just get general answers.

Rather than AI, rather than speculation on the Promo, just take a practical approach and re-evaluate every few weeks with info at hand (assuming you have flexibility in bookings) and make plans shorter-term.

Please remind me again what the difference is between a leisure stayer and a business stayer? For the property? For Marriott? For anybody?

... high count and high value leisure's ego is usually bigger because they view their revenue more important than revenue paid by expense report.... they are often wrong.

What about high count and low value because they are always seeking out the cheapest possible rate as they are spending 'their own money' like it's some sort of badge of honour that should be recognized?

Pretty sure a hotel would value more a business payer that isn't particularly rate sensitive, checks in late, doesn't avail themselves to any of the hotel amenities and leaves early the next AM for meetings over a leisure payer who pays the lowest possible rate, insists on wanting to check-in before the check-in time, takes advantage of everything and anything they can, and then wants to check-out as late as possible so they can feel they 'got their money's worth'.

Just being objective about this, hotels will definitely prefer the OPM business traveler, if for no other reason than less price sensitivity and more likely to pay for profitable add-ons like parking and meals (and without making a big fuss about it). It's also true that traveling for business, I'm much less likely to use late checkout.

Any news yet? I�m on holiday around 19th February and really wanted double nights and extra points but the only time a promo has been this late was 2021 and it didn�t start until the last few days of Feb� which would be a shame.

The 2021 promo started on Feb 16.

I think the latest we can have the promo is Feb 17 and if it doesn't start by then it means they've binned it.

The last four Winter/Spring promos have been 1000 extra points and double qualifying nights. Anything short of that will be a major disappointment. If the promo does not include double qualifying nights with bonus points, and the Marriott Bonvoy Lurker comes here and tries to spin it into anything but a disastrous promo, he or she should be either retrained or replaced.

Newman

I wonder if they're waiting to see if there is a US government shutdown.

The last shutdown significantly affected travel as government employees and contractors had to stay home. The terrible and clearly hastily released "celebrate 2025" (into 2026????) was released during the shutdown and was much later and worse than previous fall promos.

I guess we'll wait and see.

I am UK based. Never had a business stay. I only got a credit card two years ago. And I stay in Exec apartments, so my nights don�t reflect the amount I stay.

When was the promo announced last year? How many days ahead of the promo start date?

post #2

I have to budget to stay. Business customers go whatever and get their salary in full on top of expenses stays. Believe me hotels see the difference.

Wrong. All I see are peon expenses using the lounge as an office, a free bar and a place to entertain clients. While I pay out of my limited income. Of course there is a difference. And I am not tied to where business is, I choose based on the nicest hotel.