Inside the Marriott-Starwood Loyalty Program Turbulence
wsj.com
wsj.com
Since the merger, I have barely stayed at Starwood/Marriott and don't plan on giving much business to them next year.
I typically stay at hotels 150-200 nights a year and with Starwood's upper tier, I was being treated very well and never had issues getting an agent on the phone for changes. Now, at the same level (Platinum Premier w/Ambassador), I have found myself spending more time waiting to talk to an agent and basic requests going unfulfilled.
Add to this that Marriott's website is one of the worst I have ever used and I just don't see much reason to stick around.
The airlines, as much as I hate them, have this much more cut and dry. With United I know exactly what I can get at each tier and what I can ask for “just this one time”.
With Marriot it’s like, “fuck you have a candy bar and bottle of water”.
So I fly United and stay with AirBnb[0]... who I get United miles from. Cha-ching!
0: Get the MilagePlus X app
You can get 2 Chase points for booking travel w/ their Sapphire cards already, and they convert 1:1 to United miles if you want, but are much more fungible too.
some shariah compliant 'debt is bad' logic?
What do you get out of hotel rewards? With airline rewards I can upgrade to first, which is a pretty big deal to be able to do and makes a massive difference to my comfort. What do you get with hotels? A suite instead of a room? Doesn't seem worth it? Free hotel stays for personal use? Do you want to stay in a same corporate business hotels that you are doing a lot for business in your free time as well?
Hilton give me a free bottle of water when I stay. It's not very inspiring.
The biggest benefits for me when it comes to hotel status are:
1) lounge access / free breakfast
2) points for personal hotel stays (though I typically spend my hotel points on flights). I basically pay for my vacations in points.
3) The ambassador with Starwood would basically handle all of my bookings and make sure if there were any issues I was taken care of. Anytime I had a flight cancellation or change of plans, I could shoot them an e-mail or call and know it would get handled.
Sure your credit card might let you transfer to a bunch of Star Alliance brands, but once it is in that one brand or you earned that one brands airline points, its stuck there.
Secondly, yes upgrades are possible. It is very random but more frequent with being in certain tiers. Late checkouts, early checkins perhaps. Free stays just because you have points, and earning free stays that don't require the points. Earning points faster because you have a certain level.
The amenities are negligible. Definitely not the point.
And finally, Marriot/Starwood is now a HUUUUUGE portfolio. You wouldn't have to stay in the corporate business hotels.
The redemption rates are also pretty nice and easy.
There are still lots of boutiques, AirBnBs and interesting hotel tonight options, but Marriott/Starwood has a compelling portfolio.
Sometimes. Room upgrades in general are a thing. I like it, especially when traveling with my SO - the extra space is nice!
>Do you want to stay in a same corporate business hotels that you are doing a lot for business in your free time as well?
Sure. Starwood and Marriott have a lot of nice hotels. W's are pretty ubiquitous and don't feel very corporate. The Luxury Collection is a bit mixed on whether or not they participate in the rewards program, but enough do that they've got some really cool spots that do, and the LC stuff is all unique. Even for chains that are more corporate feeling, like the Ritz Carlton/JW Marriott/etc, they're frequently very nice. The Westin in Tokyo is convenient for the city-loop JR green line, has a fantastic breakfast buffet and lounge with free drinks and an amazing view, etc.
Generally when I'm traveling personally I don't spend much time in my room. I want something that is conveniently located, has good breakfast, is clean, and spacious enough that I can keep all of my crap out of the way with room to spare. Getting all the points (and multipliers from having status) makes getting free hotel stays a lot easier, and means I can afford to travel more frequently.
>Hilton give me a free bottle of water when I stay.
Same with Starwood/Marriott, but, considering what some hotels charge for water bottles, free bottles being replenished every time housekeeping comes through is great. Especially if I've had a long night out drinking.
There's other perks, too. Early/late checkin - I don't have to worry about if I arrive at the airport at 8am or if my flight is at 7pm. I don't need to rush out of the hotel at 11am, or drop my bags and then have to go kill time if I get in early.
Conversely, I care much less about my Platinum airline status. I only get upgrades to first class on short flights automatically, and I mostly take long ones. Upgrades on long flights consume my upgrade awards. I get free "premium" seats in economy, but they're not huge upgrades and are pretty cheap upgrades in general. Priority boarding is nice, but I see people slip into that line all of the time without status and it's usually more trouble than it's worth for the attendant to kick them to the back of the line. Priority luggage actually getting it to me faster has been very hit or miss. I don't lose any sleep over my airline status looking like it might drop a level. I make sure I never have to worry about that with my hotel status.
Internationally, or at nicer properties I appreciate the lounge. Some hotels have a nice hot breakfast/dinner with booze and beers that's only available to guests with lounge access. It's convenient and cost effective if you are traveling for work and want to save some per diem.
Starwood in particular
1) used to have great deals for converting points to airline miles,
2) higher tiers earned very generous point multiples, and
3) offered a pay-with-points structure that was exceptionally generous all around--tons of points earned at higher-end properties which went really far at lower-end properties.
In addition, an AMEX Platinum card provided Gold tier membership, and the AMEX Starwood card compounded your point multiples--basically you just kept your Platinum current but paid for everything with the Starwood card. Moochers like me could enjoy many of the same perks as power travelers. For several years I think I spent at least as many free nights at Starwood properties as paid, including several paid vacations with family--it was amazing how far points went at Fourpoint properties in Asia.
Since the Marriott merger the calculus sucks. IIRC Chase Card + Hilton Honors is the best deal now, but nothing will ever be as amazing as the AMEX + Starwood program. I was religious about staying at Starwood properties, even if I had to pay a premium in a particular city. But lately I'm as likely to stay at a Marriott as any other hotel.
I take vacations with my mother, who is in a wheelchair, and without specific personal experience to recommend a place it is basically not worth the trouble to stay at a non-corporate hotel. Bathrooms that she can't get into, or most often a shower or bath that she can't use, a step at the entrance to the dining room, charming doorways that are not quite wide enough for a chair - lots of little things that I still barely notice when traveling alone that are capable of making a trip miserable. It's really increased my appreciation for the reliable minimum quality they offer.
Once I booked a room for 2, and showed up as 3 people, got upgraded with no problem.
Another time I had my hotel rebooked to a different one after I already showed up - (there was nothing particularly bad with the hotel, but I was new to the city & picked location badly).
It really is terrible. I tried to book the Mariott in Oakland last night for a conference and it took six attempts to get it working. There was some code on the page for Visa Checkout that didn't seem to have been tested well at all. I ended up having to alter the javascript and delete an element on the page in order to bypass the client-side validation and get the submit button to work correctly.
They brought in RedHat ProServ to manage the Openshift stuff, my former employer to lead the DevOps group in assisting the dev teams to containerize, and then when I left that team to go somewhere else, tried bringing in a devops shop in Bethesda (and then tried to hire everyone in the company to come work for them).
One great example is when they bought Ritz Carlton. They said they wouldn't change much, and then did a sweeping rebranding (changing a lot of internal verbiage, changing the 20 basics to the 12 service values, etc). A lot of the veterans felt like the brand lost a core part of its identity then.
Starwood's rewards program was award winning and pretty much everyone I knew considered it best in the industry. It's unfortunate that they bought such a great program and can't even integrate it with theirs. It's really sad and I can't imagine them salvaging it.
So now I don't book with Marriott/SPG anymore. Why would I?
But there are credit cards that will (as of 2019) give you 15 elite qualifying nights per year so Platinum will be "only" 35 nights... not that much different.
The SPG Gold status was about the last useful benefit I got from Amex platinum though so that card is probably dead to me now.
Marriott seems to be running into the same problem as American airline rewards: counting nights and miles, only, doesn't adequately differentiate between high-spend and low-spend nights and miles. So you have to set the nightly rate such that someone staying at your cheapest property can access perks at the most-expensive property. That, in turn, ends up making the perks less valuable for those who frequent your pricy properties. (This is Gresham's Law [1].)
The loyalty programs should have been kept separate, with the benefit of high-value programs getting credit at low-value ones (but not the other way, at least not at parity).
Imagine Marriott has two brands: Fairfield Inn and Ritz-Carlton. They each have a rewards program which grants one free night for every night stayed.
Now suppose, in a fit of idiocy, the rewards programs are made cross-compatible. So a Ritz-Carlton reward night can be spent at Fairfield Inn and vice versa. Where do you think the rewards will be earned? Where do you think they'll be spent? The "bad" (Fairfield Inn rewards) drove out the "good" (Ritz-Carlton rewards).
I accentuated the number of brands, magnitude of their value difference and rewards program juiciness. This was to bring into relief the resulting effect. In reality, these terms--and the effect--are smaller. Still, Gresham's law applies if one treats rewards nights earned at different hotels as different currencies. They've simply, now, been brought into a currency union.
These rewards programs were based on on nights or stays prior to the merger. SPG had no minimum spend requirements, and was widely considered the best hotel rewards program out there. And SPG had "low-end" properties as well, and there was no differentiator. I could earn all my rewards at an Aloft or Element and redeem them at a W or St. Regis.
If anything, Marriott had a higher quantity of "low-end" hotels and unless I'm significantly misremembering, you could always have earned points at the Fairfield Inn and used them at the Ritz-Carlton.
I don't understand what you think changed with this merger in that regard.
>They each have a rewards program which grants one free night for every night stayed.
It's a lot more fair to say for every $1000 spent, you have enough points to redeem a free night. In which case, some people might choose to spend more nights at the cheaper Fairfield Inn, and some might choose to stay fewer nights at the luxury Ritz. The bad money is not driving out the good.
It's true when it comes to qualifying nights, people will try to hit elite night requirements at cheaper properties. But that's not driving out the business for higher-end properties. Especially because award redemption is (mostly) based on how much you spend, not how many nights you stay.
I can see where he was going with the analogy to Gresham's, but maybe another G's law is a better fit:
I also feel like I'm competing among too many people now for upgrades. I'm a rare beast with like more than 200 nights on property this year, and well more than 100 last year. I just wish I felt more appreciated by the company.
On top of the status perks being the same, I'm loving the increased availability of hotels. There's been times where I've wanted to book at a specific Starwood property, but because it's rates were way higher than they normally are (e.g. 220/night to nearly 500/night), I'd end up fairly downmarket in comparison because I don't want any pushback on my expense report. The addition of Marriott properties has solved that for me a couple of times already this year - the W or St. Regis is way up, but the Ritz-Carlton or JW Marriott have been reasonable.
I will say I have found the lounges in Marriott properties to be a little less nice than their Starwood compatriots, however.
I choose hotel for proximity or convenience to my destination, or cost.
Hence this loyalty turbulence is largely a non-event for me.
I never played hotel currency games and when their values goes down - it does not affect my decision to stay at that hotel or at their competition next door.
Would the extra 10 nights on it help you get regular Plat on nights vs. stays?
The 75 night tier gets you your additional 5 awards back, and bumps you up to 75% point bonus.
Hotel stays were often times 12K points for a $400/night hotel in maui (3.3% return).
When they converted SPG to marriott they did it at a 1spg:3marriott conversion rate, but ongoing only earns at a $1:2 point rate. The card is a significantly worse value.
What a nightmare. The miles apparently got "lost". I had to make many phone calls which meant being on hold for 30 minutes each time.
Wasted probably a full work day trying to sort everything out with them.
Eventually, I just gave up as I didn't want to waste more time with this company.
About 5 weeks later my miles appeared in the airline account. Very frustrating experience.
Tl;dr: 500m guest records stolen from Starwood in data breach
I tried to book a haircut using my barber’s new online reservation thing. Of course it was all fucked up.
Everything’s fucked up and no one cares. I wonder what it will take to change the mentality around quality/testing in these companies.