Marriott gets rid of black-out dates (but still manages to devalue your points)
A good thing, right? Sort of. No.
First, the good news:
Based on feedback from our members, I am excited to announce a number of program enhancements being made effective January 15, 2009 – and we are announcing it here first. The official announcement will be made tomorrow on Marriott.com and by email.
Blackout dates will be eliminated. Starting on January 15, 2009, every hotel will have standard rooms available for redemptions every day. While this does not mean you will never again have difficulty booking a redemption stay, it does mean these difficulties will be rare. Hotels will only be able to limit the number of rooms available for redemption on a very limited number of nights.
Platinum Elite Bonus will increase from 30% to 50%. In order to strengthen our elite program and recognize our most valuable members, the platinum bonus will increase from thirty to fifty percent of the base points earned.
Redeem for 4 nights and get the 5th redemption free. You will also see changes in the way hotel rewards are priced. We will migrate to a one night award structure with redeem for 4 nights, receive the 5th night free award option.
We are very excited about these program changes. I encourage all of you who are interested in knowing more to look over the information that has been posted online at: http://www.marriott.com/marriott.mi?…tRoomAvailable and let us know what questions you have. It is our goal to make this program upgrade as simple and rewarding as possible.
Cool.
Now, the bad news. If you click on the above link you are brought to a page that has the “new award structure” details. While black-out dates go away, it is going to cost you more points to get awards:
Marriott is introducing a new category (at a whopping 40k/night) and will likely just slide up their properties to higher categories. Ergo, your points have been devalued.
Nice way of hiding this change in an “announcement” (oooh announcements are exciting!), but this one gets a thumbs down from me.
October 21st, 2008 15:56
[...] are some critics out there who aren’t so happy about this new announcement. Most notably, Scholar in Training posts on his blog that buried in the “positive” changes to Marriott Rewards are increased point [...]