RAPC

Many people seem to be obsessed with nights. That is only 1 metric out of a number that determined whether someone was worthy of lifetime status in either program. You can equally argue that SPG had a 10 year+ metric, whereas Marriott (albeit there was a historic level) did not have such a qualifying metric. Same goes for the arguments about nights (and points) from cards (which applies mainly to the US and not members elsewhere) or qualifying nights / stays from multiple rooms. There isn't an easy way to benchmark them and we can collectively debate the merits of these until the cows come home.

The part about SPG Plat = MR Gold is not accurate. It wasn't matched as a 'special generous offer', but was done in preparation of an alignment of programs and was also based in part on business insight on the relative average revenue per night from regular customers in both programs. The VP Sales, Marriott International (based in the UK) shared some very strong information on this last year at an industry event to back why Marriott were buying Starwood. Put it this way, 50 nights in SPG averaged somewhere not far from (can't remember if it would equate to more or less) 75 in Marriott, based on the global footprint and revenue.

Ultimately, I believe that Marriott have been working through this process in good faith and will hopefully continue to do so. They made a small mis-step with the handling of LTP, which won't cost them anything to fix, but may lose them considerable goodwill and / or business from some of the very members they were keen to acquire.

UA-NYC

Heavily agree - it's intellectually dishonest for some to keep saying "750>>>500 so much harder!" when the MR ways to game nights were far easier and greater than SPG.

penlin

I agree

djohannw

What I always see here is that people are holding out the extremes to each other. Not every LTP on the Marriott side has the credit card (e.g. because he lives outside of the US and the UK and simply cannot get one) or even has been earning 15 points per night on every stay (when staying at some extended stay brands earnings can be as low as 2.5 points per dollar) as well as not every LTP on the SPG side books three rooms at a time every stay throughout the year. And to add to that, even with 750 nights it's not a given that a third of these nights were rollover or other promotional nights on either end.

That all said, how about looking at averages? Given the vast number of accounts that needs to be considered, tailoring things in a way that is absolutely fair is just close to impossible, as evidenced here in this thread. Those on the Marriott side think the differentiation between LTPM and LTPS is correct, while those on the SPG side think it is unwarranted, at least for a undefined number of people that have achieved similar numbers of nights and points.

At the end of the day Marriott decided considering the averages, however. They calculated that the average SPG Plat had 50 nights a year and it took them 10 years to get to Lifetime-status (hence the 10 year requirement), the average Marriott Platinum would, to reach that goal over the same time, need 75 nights each year to accomplish this mission, and then make sure that he also hit the revenue target. So with THIS view (which might be the way Marriott looked at it, but maybe something completely different) it's understandable that they thought a LTPM would be requiring a tad more grease during the move to the new program, and that's why they put some small benefits together to differentiate. As it has been worked out here a few times, the major additional benefit is 2.5 extra points per dollar, or about 2ct more kickback from hotel-stays...so probably not the end of the world for most people here.

Greetings - Dirk

Yul_voyager

Well I don't think SPG Gold, which required only 10 stays, was given away with some credit card and gave you free internet and late check-out, compare to Marriott Gold which required 50 nights and gave you free breakfast, lounge access, real upgrades and more recently late check-out. MR Gold definitely compares in term of qualifying criteria and benefits, to SPG Plat. The status match was really to push SPG members to try the Marriott brand.

Also I think some SPG are overestimating the issue because, to begin with they are not that much SPG LPT and I think the majority will stick with Starriott anyway because 1- there are not that much difference between LTP and LTPP and 2- as a LTP they will be treated better and have way more benefits than everywhere else without status. So at some point you want to punish Marriott but you are actually punish yourself by not enjoying what you got and Marriott wouldn't even notice that 0.0001% of their costumers (even if this is from the top of them) will move elsewhere...

That'd said, I still think they should do something for SPG LPT with +750 nights...

phltraveler

Most people are not going to run $105,000 in spend across the MR card each year. If you want to talk about the ease of getting nights, then point to the Rewarding Events program which gives 10 elite night credit on meeting rooms that cost $100-$200. Meeting organizers for companies could arrange 8 meetings a year for other people and get plat (not lifetime) without staying a single night in the hotel. (Although if you never stayed at a Marriott, what would the benefit of getting plat be)?

Unlike SPG though, the Marriott lifetime status also had a lifetime points requirement. If you stayed at one of the brands that offered 10 points per dollar + 50% elite bonus (5 points) + 5 points for Marriott spend on the credit card, then you could hit 2 million points with $100K spend. If some of that spend was on non-room rate stuff (many of the ten properties only apply the 10 points to room rates excluding tax and no incidentals, and even at the brands that do there are exclusions), then the actual spend amount was more. So people who booked meeting rooms for their companies didn't get an automatic rush to lifetime, because the events only rewarded at 3 points per dollar. The reward rate of the MR credit card on non-hotel purchases was also lacking. 2 points on airline tickets purchased directly, car rentals, and restaurants, 1 point on all else) was also really paltry compared to the SPG credit card (which gave 2 starpoints [equivalent to 6 MR] on hotel purchases, and 1 starpoint [equivalent to 3MR].

If I stayed at a full service Marriott with a rate of $150 a night (a real example of mine from an autograph collection hotel I spent quite a bit of time at), then I would need to stay 58 nights to get Marriott Lifetime plat (58 nights @ $150/night = $8,700 in spend, that's 2 extra elite qualifying nights [1 for every $3,000] plus the 15 from the credit card puts me at 75 nightsexactly). That $8,700 in spend would garner 174,000 points in that year, meaning it would take 11.49 years of doing that each and every year to reach 2 million points. Rates in much of the country are lower, especially on corporate discount (I regularly stayed at a full service Marriott in Memphis, brand new in 2013, $350 rack rate, $209 generally best available rate, $109 corporate discount rate)

Let's take your example instead though. Okay, you move $105K across the card. How much of that is actually hotel room rate spend? If you take the nights as a way to stay fewer butt-in-bed nights, then let's subtract that 50 nights in your example from 75 for plat qualification and say the other 25 night gap is going to come from actual hotel spend. Let's say you're a bigger spender spending $400 a night on base room rate (unrealistic for many of us staying at cheaper properties, cheaper areas of the country, or at pre-negotiated corporate discount rates). $400/night * 25 nights = $10,000 in hotel spend * 20 points (10 points per dollar + 5 points plat elite bonus + 5 points for putting it on a Marriott credit card) = 200,000 points from stays. Even if we then assume that the rest of the spend to hit 105K (the amount that would be required to get to 35 nights elite status at 1 extra night per $3,000 card spend) or $95K was under categories that solely placed it under the 2 points per dollar (instead of the 1 point on all other purchases), then you're talking about an extra 190,000 points. If you kept this activity up, you would earn 390,000 points a year (again a generous assumption, because this figure assumes a high average room rate and that someone moves $95,000K in spending across the Marriott card solely on airfare purchased directly at airline + car rentals + restaurants), and qualify for lifetime plat in a little under 6 years.

The vast majority of us don't get to bill their customers $400 room rates. Many clients set limits on what they will reimburse, or will require a discount rate that can be 25%-50% or more reduced from the best available rate. And most Marriott Rewards members are not going to be able to sustain moving $95K of non-Marriott spend across their card each year. Some people will be required to stay at Residence Inn, which only qualifies at five points per dollar on room rate (7.5 with plat elite bonus, 12.5 once the nights are moved across the credit card), or Marriott Executive apartments or Execustay (which credited at a mere 2.5 points, 3.75 points per dollar with elite bonus or 8.75 with credit card bonus and also only qualifying one elite night for every 3 actual nights stayed). A generally best available rate at a beautiful high end Autograph Collection property in the midwest can be $200. A lot of elite members in Marriott are flush with nights (between actual stays and credit card bonus) but fall way short on the points thresholds for Lifetime Silver/Gold/Platinum.

Meanwhile, comparing to legacy SPG, the 500 nights for lifetime plat have to be earned at 10 years where plat is retained each year. There's no night "bonus" or "loopholes" from the credit card, but there is a perk that doesn't exist in MR that does at SPG - you get credit for multiple rooms. So if you go on vacation and book three rooms for your family for five days, that's 15 nights elite credit. In Marriott Rewards, you'd only get 5 nights credit for the one room, even if you booked and paid for all three rooms. Even if we assume all nights come from a person booking single rooms, those 50 nights per year don't have to have any particular value - 50 nights at a sub $100 average rate count equally to 50 nights at a $400 average room rate.

In short - If you are someone who can spend $400 a night and stay 25 nights with a Marriott credit card ($10K marriott room rate spend), and then manufacture another $95K in other spending only on airfare/rental car/restaurants on the Marriott card, then you can hit elite status in Marriott Rewards with half the actual butt-in-bed nights, then yes - Marriott Lifetime Platinum is far easier. Most Marriott elites have nowhere near $95K in such spend to manufacture, and stay at room rates that are $200 or less (sometimes closer to $100) on average, which means that even with heaps of nights in excess of the 750 required for lifetime plat, they fall short on points. I would wager a large sum that the number of people that could consistently move such spend across the Marriott Card (much less the number of people who actually did so) to be a small portion of the elite population.

If we take the argument that SPG LTP @ 500 nights should be grandfathered in, then current SPG plats are going to be asking why they aren't grandfathered in too. Then current plats on Marriott (people qualifying with typically at least 50+ actual butt in bed nights and 75 elite nights) and Marriott lifetime plats (750 nights) are going to ask why people who qualified in as little as 25 nights (25 one night stays = 25 nights = SPG plat) are given equal rank. Then that move would cascade down to Marriott Gold/Lifetime Gold, and Marriott Golds (at 50 points per night) and lifetime golds (500 nights + 1.6 million points) would be asking why people who qualified in as little as 10 nights (one night stays X 10 = 10 stays = SPG Gold) or lifetime at 250 nights, half of that at Marriott. Then a lot of people are upset that the ranks are being flooded with more elites as the programs combined, and anger/tension on the larger population of the people from the legacy Marriott rewards program.

For the record, I earned MR legacy Lifetime Plat within five and a half years at Marriott Rewards, with an average room rate of about $150 a night. I barely made it on the 2 million lifetime points - if it weren't for certain stay bonuses and concentrating my room spend on the credit card This involved three years of travel where I was staying in excess of 100 actual butt-in-bed nights per year (bearing in mind award nights didn't count until a couple years ago toward night count, and whenever I booked multiple rooms for vacations I only got credit for the room I stayed in). If I was in SPG, I would not have qualified for lifetime plat (I would only have 50 nights credit per year from 2013-2017, or four program years). In that sense, it was "easier" to get Lifetime Plat in MR, because my stay activity was so densely concentrated.Out of my 750 nights, approximately 110 of them came from the credit card, and about five were from award redemption.

This is why I support qualification for select SPG LTP to become new MR LTPP, but not all of them. Right now there's a disparate impact - SPG Plat lifetime was easier to earn overall if your stays were spaced out over the years or if you booked multiple rooms (as the elite member received qualifying credit for all rooms, unlike MR), and it was easier if your average spend per room was less (as there was no points criteria on lifetime). MR was generally easier if you tried to stay at the 10 point properties, maximize your spend at them, and if you had years in which you surpassed the platinum qualification requirement of 75 nights with 100+ actual nights spent in rooms).

In both programs there were ways to get nights that didn't exist in the other program. Starwood required 10 years of plat status at 50 nights earned through hotels alone, MR required 750 overall but imposed a points total and rewarded points at a lower rate for non-Marriott purchases (and at many properties, a far lower rate for anything that wasn't the base room rate).

This is why I support an equalization, if the legacy program was 750 nights + 2 million Marriott points for Marriott Lifetime Platinum, then the cumulative elite history of all combined years in both Starwood and Marriott should be combined together for a member (converting starpoints to MR points at 3:1 ratio of lifetime earned balance). If they hit that threshold regardless of whether or not the member is currently considered lifetime platinum (maybe they did not hit ten years at platinum), then they should get LTPP in new program. If someone met the 10 year/500 night requirement at SPG but not the 750 night + 2 million point requirement, then grandfathering them in at the new lifetime platinum and not the lifetime premier platinum level status makes sense. The new lifetime Plat level maps essentially the same as the benefits SPG LTP got before (suite night awards don't count because lifetime SPG plats didn't get them unless they stayed at least 50 nights, which would have qualified them as Plat for the year regardless).

Why Marriott isn't doing this:

A few theories come to mind.

1. They thought there wouldn't be enough members with SPG Plat now to make it worth the effort to total it.
2. They thought there weren't enough members with SPG Plat that would get outraged enough to reduce their spend or leave, given Marriott's strong domestic US footprint (and overseas, the combined footprint)
3. Starwood's system may not technically allow them to pull data on where starpoints came from (transfers from other programs or whatever) that would have qualified.
4. Marriott maybe thought that regular plat would take offense for "stopping" at 500 nights earning the highest status in Starwood and maybe reducing overall travel or switching to another chain when they had no idea a combined program with another chain would later come with different criteria for lifetime status. Then if they grandfathered in people at the 50 night criteria, existing marriott LTP would be upset (perceived as a group that had it easier being brought as equals) and current SPG Plat would be upset (different treatment on lifetime vs. current plats)

The last one seems the most probable to me as I bet the smallest group to upset is the SPG LTPs with the 750+ nights lifetime, and Marriott is probably guessing that most elites are not going to be that spiteful because of the worldwide combined strength of the merged Marriott + Starwood.

rosscali

I agree

spgplat21

You touch on a very important point, but then gloss over it for your sample spend calculations to make the 2M seem much hard than it actually is. Promotions and bonus points have been a huge part of both programs for as long as I can remember, so in very few cases is the point calculation as simple as $x times the standard earning rate. My Marriott bonus experience is fairly limited, but in those cases, I earned a pretty significant amount of bonus points through various promotions. I just checked my lifetime Marriott stats and I'm at 21 nights and 116,063 points. I don't have the Marriott credit card and have never received a signup bonus on a Marriott card, so that number is just stay earnings plus bonus points. I pretty much only stayed during promotion periods since the merger so admittedly that number is somewhat inflated from someone staying year round regardless of promotions, but it still shows the flaw in a calculation that ignores bonus points.

christianj

I agree!

phltraveler

I don't disagree that promotions like the MegaBonus can help. I would not have hit 2 million lifetime points without them.

(Although some years and seasons the promo is better than others, and the offers given are sometimes weak - sometimes as weak as just a free night certificate or doubling points on a maximum of three stays [most promos have different Marriott targeted criteria], but then score8's point (who I was replying to) about the 50 nights doesn't hold water. Most of the Marriott promos require 30-35 nights to max out the bonus points requirement. The fall 2016 Megabonus required 50 nights to max out at 50,000 points (10,000 points awarded for every ten nights). None of the credit card nights count towards Megabonus or other promos, only stays, or in most cases, actual nights stayed at a Marriott property.

Yes, the promos help with the bonus points - if you're actually staying at hotels. Depending on the year and what you were offered, you could make anywhere between zero points (if the Marriott bonus offers weren't points but free night certs instead) up to around 100-150K extra points a year on the promos (most program years in the past few years had 2 promos topping off around 50-55K points max, many were less. All in exchange for ~60 actual butt-in-hotel nights (which would put you over 75 for legacy MR Plat with the 15 bonus credit card nights). And typically these requirements among four month time periods, meaning you had to concentrate your stays/nights hard at Marriott to qualify for the bonuses.

Again, I have nothing against the SPG LTPs with 750+ nights and 2M MR points equivalent lifetime earn who feel that they should have grandfathered Marriott LTPP status in the new program - I totally support that. For SPG LTP members who fell short though, for the reasons I described already, it doesn't seem that simple (because it will upset other groups with larger populations, making it a losing proposition for Marriott).

MSPeconomist

I could see the new program grandfathering only certain SPG LTPs into LTPP, but what I think would be a fair compromise would be difficult to implement:

First, in addition to SPG LTP, require at least 750 nights. Don't even consider anyone with less than 750 SPG (not combined) nights as of April 16th.In fact, more nights should probably be required since it's too difficult to calculate whether 2MM lifetime points would have been earned under MR rules for points.

Secondly, don't permit double or triple credit for rooms not occupied by the elite to count for the 750 or higher requirement. Too many people abused the program by getting double and triple night/stay credits for rooms occupied by others (family members, friends, work colleagues, etc.).

Third, remove award stays from the nights count.

I'd also like to see lifetime points adjusted to mirror what would have been earned under the MR program as indeed, for many folks on the Marriott side, the 2MM (earlier 3MM) lifetime points requirement wasn't at all easy, but I fear that this would be far too complicated.

<ducking to avoid the predicted reaction here>

schley

You know you are posting this in the thread where we are putting a petition to Marriott to ALLOW SPG LTP to the LTPP??????

Medved

Not fair for travelers for cheaper destinations. At St. Regis in NYC or W London one can spend more in a day than in most places in a week. Plus currency conversion -- subpar currency such as a Canadian dollar makes your spend count much lower than in pound, euro or even US $ world.

jeanie

There seems to be about 100 people, give or take, that are very vocal about this issue on this board. Marriott is probably not going to change the terms of the new loyalty program or write special IT code for 100 people. There are probably going to be technical issues in the merging of the programs that will affect thousands of people, and those issues will most likely take priority.

Maybe your best chance is to organize a response after August 1. I wrote into Marriott Rewards on my own behalf. I have enough Marriott nights for LTP, but need points. I actually have enough SPG points, if they were combined with MR points, to put me over the 2 million point mark. So I asked about that. Here was their response.

Based on the number of people willing to organize on this board, maybe your best shot is to contact Marriott Rewards individually after the programs combine and ask for special consideration for your personal situation. Just a thought. There could be multiple ways to approach this issue.

Medved

Same rules should apply for SPG LTPs as to MAR LTPs. I agree that 750+ should be counted in ONE program as Marriott LTPs are not allowed to count their SPG nights towards LTPP. But why April 16th? Why not, say, Jan 1st, 2016? It's completely arbitrary... The same date when Mar LTPs are "grandfathered" into LTPP must be used. If it's Aug 1, so be it. If Dec 31, so be it.

"Too many people abused the program ... " You just made it up, didn't you? You cannot have the actual stats... And this was not the abuse but the use of a legit program benefit. In my 18 years I used it 4 times adding 22 additional nights MAR patrons pumped 15 nights a year just for signing up for a credit card... Common... Same goes for award nights. Each program gives credits for things which would be considered absolutely ridiculous in the other. Not easy to bring it to a common denominator.

And trust me, making 1MM SPG points wasn't easy either.