Marriott Bonvoy has announced a major change to the way that it prices award nights – and this is bad news for nearly every InsideFlyer reader!
Marriott Bonvoy will eliminate award charts and move instead towards “flexible points redemption rates”. We typically call this “dynamic pricing” – the number of points needed will more closely track the underlying cash rate.
The process will be staged.
- Stage 1 – award charts will remain in place until March 2022
- Stage 2 – for the remainder of 2022, award pricing will fluctuate between existing off-peak and peak award prices (at 97% of Marriott’s properties – the remaining 3% will be free to price at much higher levels)
- Stage 3 – for 2023 and beyond, there will be no limit on award pricing
The only uncertainty regarding the process is whether the removal of pricing caps for 2023 stays will happen in March 2022, or whether it will be phased in during 2022.
The only partial good news is that Marriott Bonvoy will be retaining the fifth night free benefit. Click here to be reminded of how that works.
If you want a reminder of Marriott’s current award chart – and many of you will probably want to spend most of your points before March 2022 – here it is…
Why is this bad?
With dynamic pricing, a loyalty programme is aiming to get rid of “sweetspots”. But it is precisely those sweetspots that lead to members becoming engaged with a loyalty program. Moreover, what might be a sweetspot for one member (i.e. longer stays at reasonably-priced hotels) could be different for another (i.e. high-end, luxury hotel stays).
But when you get rid of all that, and replace it with a sort-of-fixed-but-hard-to-understand value per point you end up with disengaged members. I can’t be bothered with France’s Accor and its fixed value per point, can you? I can also barely manage to engage with Hilton Honors, because I know that the points I earn won’t be worth much…
And that’s without stating the obvious… that the truly aspirational awards will become much more expensive and members will never know exactly how many points are needed to take their family on holiday.
Bad news yesterday… what do you think? Let us know in the comments section…
As someone that had over 3MM Marriott points and now down to 500K, I have found the value in Marriott to sink and now we are seeing Marriott and Hilton race for the bottom. I thought Hilton was by themselves but now Marriott is racing them to the bottom. Despite Hyatt just sending points up by 20 percent, they still provide a much better and consistent value. I am liftetime titanium elite with Marriott and that benefit is becoming more like the Spire benefit at IHG, worth nothing.
Completely agree. Right now both Marriott and Hilton offer 10 points per $ on hotel spend, but Marriott points are worth at least 50-75% more. I can’t see that lasting long once Marriott go full dynamic pricing…