As we previously reported, Marriott will be making an announcement today at 4:30 about the future of the Marriott, SPG, and Ritz rewards programs. Will this be good news, bad news, or much ado about nothing? Nick and I will be there in person, but you can view the event yourself via Facebook (here). Also, please join us here on this blog page (see below) or on Twitter while we tweet our reactions to the event live.
The following are the most recent of our tweets. Once we start tweeting about the Marriott event, the tweets should show up here with the most recent tweets on top:
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[…] press release, or check out coverage from Doctor of Credit, View from the Wing, One Mile at a Time, Frequent Miler, Award Travel 101, and Miles to Memories among […]
Previously, with the Ritz card (premium Marriott card), you could get Marriott Gold with 10k spend or Marriott Platinum with 75k spend.
My understanding is:
New Marriott Gold = old SPG Gold
New Marriott Platinum = old Marriott Gold
New Marriott Platinum Premier = old Marriott Platinum
So using the new SPG platinum card, you automatically get the new Marriott Gold status, which is similar to SPG gold in terms of the benefits. However, putting 75k spend on the SPG platinum card will get you the new Marriott Platinum, which is sort of like the old Marriott Gold.
So achieving the old Marriott Platinum status via spend seems unattainable at this point 🙁
Boy, was I wrong.
Would Love to get confirmation on how long we have to earn the old Marriott lifetime status. I see the status converts Aug 1, but the link online says lifetime status TODAY. Is today really referring to today, or do I have 2 and 1/2 months to get to a higher status?
Reason I ask is that LT Gold (old Marriott) becomes LT Platinum (new program), and I’m a few nights short.
So it looks like they will maintain the 25% bonus transferring to airlines – what isn’t clear is what the airline transfer rates will be. If they go by the old Marriott rates it means the program is dead, if they keep the SPG transfer rates, it’s fine.
It looks like they are keeping the SPG transfer rates which is good. BUT, from what I can tell, the SPG Amex card will only earn 2 points per $ spent on non-bonused spend. Since this is the new program Marriott/SPG points, it takes 3 of these points to earn one airline point (depending on the airline, there are a few exceptions…for the worse). So, you can earn 2/3 of a point from what it was before and then you can add the 25% bonus (for transferring 60K points = 20K star points as before) and end up with a hair under 1 airline mile as compared to the old transfer of 1 to 1.25 ratio that it was for the old SPG program. If I got that right, it makes more sense now to put spend on say the Citi AA credit card than to put it on the SPG card and convert it over. If I got this wrong, please correct me.
Marriott website already has the new information posted