Marriott International has announced that they will be eliminating their long-running programs for booking award travel and credit card rewards effective next Wednesday. The change is to allow the company to focus more on providing compelling experiences for guests. This decision by Marriott was met with mixed responses from both customers and industry analysts who saw it as a step in the right direction but also felt like this might have been an opportunity missed.
Marriott has announced that it is eliminating Air and Hotel Awards effective next Wednesday. The company will also be raising prices on its room rates. Read more in detail here: marriott hotels & resorts.
Marriott is phasing out its air and hotel awards as of next Wednesday.
on January 12, 2022 by Gary Leff
Marriott travel packages – a multi-night hotel stay coupled with an airline mile transfer – used to be one of the great sweet spots of Marriott Rewards, much as Starwood Preferred Guest’s ‘Nights and Flights’ was a terrific value choice. These redemptions are no longer available as of January 19, 2022.
When Marriott Bonvoy was launched four years ago, the price of these awards skyrocketed, but the addition of peak season pricing offered reward category-based certificates a new use case.
If you used these packages to redeem hotel nights during off-peak times, you came out behind upper-tier establishments — in some instances far behind. However, if you wanted a 100,000 mile transfer and a seven-night stay at a category 4 or higher hotel, you could still save 90,000 points by redeeming for peak nights.
| 7 nights plus | Seasonal Highs | ||||
| Category | a million miles | Separately priced | Savings | ||
| 4 | 330,000 | 420,000 | 90,000 | ||
| 5 | 390,000 | 480,000 | 90,000 | ||
| 6 | 510,000 | 600,000 | 90,000 | ||
| 7 | 570,000 | 660,000 | 90,000 | ||
| 8 | 750,000 | 840,000 | 90,000 |
Marriott is doing rid of redemption categories (which is never a good thing), as well as Hotel and Air Travel Packages, starting next Wednesday.
According to an unexpected change to the program’s terms and conditions,
3.14 Hotel and Air Travel Packages Effective January 19, 2022, Hotel and Air Travel Packages are no longer available for purchase.
Marriott seems to have issued the information in their terms and conditions update sooner than anticipated, and this blog post isn’t the way they intended for members to learn about the change. “The material was released early, and we regret the mistake,” a spokeswoman said. In the next days, we will provide more information for members.”
Because the use case for these certificates has been restricted in recent years, the real loss is small. However, these vacation packages have played such a prominent role for so long that withdrawing them completely seems like part of the program’s denouement for visitors who have gotten disproportionate value from it.
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