Got a Marriott Travel Package? You might not want to attach it.

Earlier this month, we reported on the fact that Marriott was ending the sale of travel packages as of 1/19/22. We then found out that Marriott would only allow Travel Packages to be attached to a hotel stay until February 28th. After that date, any outstanding unattached travel packages would be cancelled. For those packages that are cancelled, Marriott told us of a plan for an extra generous compensation. Then, readers reported being told different things by customer service. This post offers an update on the handling of travel packages — and a warning about messing with any that you already have attached.

Cancelled packages set to get a great outcome

According to a representative from Marriott, those certificates that are not attached to a hotel stay by 2/28/22 will automatically be cancelled. Interestingly, we are told that cancelled packages will receive the equivalent number of points required to book seven nights at peak price for the category level. That seems very generous.

Consider for example that a Category 5 seven-night Travel Package and 100,000 airline miles originally cost 390,000 Marriott Bonvoy points (based on post-merger pricing).

A peak-priced Category 5 property would ordinarily cost 240,000 points for seven nights (considering the 5th night would be free), though some are interpreting Marriott’s messaging as saying that you’ll actually get the points for each of seven peak nights (280K total points). Let’s suppose the lesser amount is what you’ll actually receive. If you were to get 240K points refunded for the hotel portion, you would have effectively turned 140,000 Marrriott Bonvoy points into 100,000 airline miles. That’s a solid deal considering that 140K Marriott points would ordinarily convert to about 57,000 airline miles.

So if you have a travel package and it isn’t yet attached (and you aren’t very confident about where you’d like to use it), you’re probably better off leaving it unattached.

Note that if you try to cancel the package now you will get next to nothing for it. We had reports in Frequent Miler Insiders of people being told they would receive amounts in the range of 5K-40K points if they cancelled their Travel Package now. That’s obviously not worth it. Just wait until early March (and don’t be surprised if the points refund doesn’t happen instantly on March 1st).

Don’t try to un-attach an already-attached Travel Package

If you already have a Travel Package attached to a hotel stay, you may see an opportunity here: if you were able to un-attach the certificate and get 7 nights worth of points, you could theoretically re-book the hotel using points (perhaps for fewer nights or perhaps you would come out a bit ahead if some of your nights are not peaked priced). Points would give you more flexibility.

Don’t try that move.

Dan over at Dan’s Deals had that type of thought with a Category 8 package that he had attached to a hotel stay. The short story is that despite explaining to an agent clearly that he didn’t want to cancel his Travel Package but rather just un-attach it and despite the agent clearly understanding that and confirming that they were just un-attaching it, they ultimately cancelled his Travel Package and gave him 5,000 points for it.

You can read more about it in his post, but the bottom line is that there was no way to reverse the cancellation and while the right thing to do would obviously be to give him 600K or 700K points, I imagine not even Dan was shocked (angered I am sure, but probably not shocked) that nobody in customer service had the juice to issue hundreds of thousands of points to his account and since they no longer sell the certificates it isn’t as though they could poof one out of thin air to replace his.

I seriously hope that Marriott does something to make him whole (and also anyone else in a similar situation, and I do see data points of others in that boat), but the moral of the story is that you don’t want to end up hoping that Marriott does something to make it right. If you already have the certificate attached to a stay, I highly recommend leaving it alone and enjoying your stay rather than opening that can of worms.

Bottom line

Marriott no longer sells Travel Packages, but those sitting on unattached Travel Packages stand to make out pretty well according to what we’ve been told after those packages get cancelled out after 2/28/22. That said, if your Travel Package is already attached to a stay, I strongly recommend that you leave it alone as it isn’t worth the risk of an agent cancelling it out when trying to modify something as that seems to be an irreversible mistake that will be a major headache at best and perhaps a huge loss at worst.

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