On paper, Marriott Bonvoy is an excellent loyalty program. It offers many ways to earn and redeem points, and its elite program offers upgrade certificates, free breakfast and more. But… it’s no accident that “Bonvoy” has become a negative verb (as in “you’ve been Bonvoyed!”). We get nickel and dimed with ever-increasing resort fees; our free breakfasts often aren’t free; those upgrades frequently fail; and our free night certificates often fall short.
Some of the issues we have with Marriott are due to poor enforcement of program benefits. Others are due to problematic IT. I’d love for those issues to be fixed, but they’re not what this post is about. This post is specifically about the documented Bonvoy program. In other words, even if the program benefits were globally enforced and if Marriott’s website and app always worked perfectly, there are things I’d like changed. Below is my wishlist of things I’d like to see changed. I believe that these changes would go a very long way towards making Bonvoy a program we love rather than tolerate.
The following wishlist is roughly sorted in priority order…
Waive resort fees on award stays
Is it too much to ask that our “free stays” actually be free? Come on Marriott, both Hilton and Hyatt waive resort fees on award stays, so you can too. And lest you think that only programs starting with “H” can do it, don’t forget that Wyndham does it too.
Fix the Platinum Elite free breakfast benefit
Those with Platinum Elite status are supposed to get free breakfast at Marriott properties. But some brands only provide $10. Others don’t provide breakfast at all. And, among the brands that offer free breakfast, there’s a list of exempt properties that should give you breakfast but don’t have to (and so they don’t). It’s so convoluted that we created a guide to Bonvoy free breakfast (found here).
Come on Marriott… Fix this! When staying at ANY Marriott hotel, Platinum Elite members should always get free breakfast instead of excuses.
Clear Nightly Upgrade Awards from the time of booking
Currently, Nightly Upgrade Awards (which are benefits that you can choose at 50 nights and 75 nights each year) don’t start looking for upgrade availability until 3 days before the stay. When upgrades are important to us, the 3 day thing makes our vacations more stressful while we sweat it out waiting to see what happens. Please, please, please, Marriott, clear the upgrades early so that we can eagerly look forward to our stays rather than stressing about them!
Remove the 15K limit on free night certificate top-offs
Bonvoy lets us add up to 15,000 points to our free night certificates to book award stays. Adding that capability was a good enhancement, but it didn’t go far enough. It’s way too frustrating when trying to use 35K free night certs and rooms cost 51K. IHG has unlimited top-offs, Marriott, so why can’t you?
Make Bonvoy credit cards more rewarding for spend
Given that Marriott points are worth, on average, considerably less than a penny each (details here), the 2x base earning rate for Marriott cards just isn’t good enough. Marriott, consider bumping that up to 3x (both IHG and Hilton do this). Also, or alternatively, consider adding 6x in popular categories like dining and grocery shopping. Or, at the very least, offer significant bonus points when hitting big spend thresholds.
More wishes
Via the Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook Group, I asked group members what changes they’d like to see Marriott make to the Bonvoy loyalty program. Here are some of the suggestions from the Facebook group that I think are good ideas, but which didn’t make it into my top wishes above:
- Free parking for high level elites.
- Add meaningful Titanium elite benefits above those offered to Platinum elites.
- Let us use free night certificates with your ‘Stay 5, Pay For 4’ benefit.
- Make premium rooms bookable with free night certificates as long as they are within the point limit.
- Introduce more – and better – Choice benefits. e.g. a 35k night cert (or even a 25k night cert) at the 50 night level would be a nice additional option.
- Allow people to earn lifetime Titanium Elite status.
See Also
- Bonvoyology: Mastering Marriott’s Mysteries
- Marriott Bonvoy Complete Guide
- My World of Hyatt wishlist. Make a good thing even better
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What were the Lifetime Titanium requirements at the time of the merger? I know there are some lifetime Titainums out there.
This status was only awarded for a short time when Bonvoy first started up and Marriott needed to incorporate the slew of Starwood loyalists. Since Marriott was shaking everything up anyway they created Lifetime Titanium for the merger but discontinued afterwards.
First let’s congratulate Marriott for a change for the better. They’ve upgraded their IT so that you can choose which free night certificate to use. Yea Marriott!
Next let’s focus on changes that are least costly to Marriott and their franchisees.
1) At least uncap the 85k free night certificate. You should be able to use it and points to book any room that you can book with points.
2) Any room that can be booked with points and money should be bookable with a free night certificate and points and money. That’s wheter they allow you to book a 65K room with 32.5K and $200, or upgrade a 85K basic room to a 2 bedroom suite with 85K and $800.
Either of those changes should be close to revenue neutral. (I’m assuming that the Points Plus Cash bookings are something the franchisees do voluntarily. If so they’d get just as much from a free night plus cash as the points plus cash they already accept.)
The final doable change is making the bank points rate more realistic. That’s harder because both AmEx and Chase transfer points to Marriott, and for Chase a rate close to 2 for 1 would mirror the Hyatt rate, but for Amex 2 for 1 would value Marriott and Hilton points the same. Maybe a compromise of 1.5 Marriott points per Amex or Chase points would work. This shouldn’t be an extra cost. Who transfers either MR or UR points to Marriott at 1 to 1? Boosting the number of transfers would likely be good for both Marriott and the banks.
You’re completely correct with this wish list. Unfortunately Marriott consistently refuses to enforce even the most basic requirements that hotels agreed to – in writing – before signing up for Bonvoy yet still absolutely refuse to honor the terms they agreed upon due to those terms being inconvenient. Even more unfortunately, corporate won’t help you because they simply don’t care. I love your suggestions but given Marriott’s intransigence and intense dislike of loyal members I’d bet against the loyal guest rather than for them.
Two-way status match with MGM
aleluya!!!! finally a great article exposing the abuse Marriott has with us the Titanium Elite members…you also forgot to mention the need of remodeling…a lot of horrible bathrooms in an alleged upscale Hotels…huge lack of maintenance!!!
Not that I don’t agree & they definitely need to fix breakfast but this is just another part of the game to navigate. Give away status with a card then dilute the status benefits. We all know that if everyone is elite, no one is elite.
And yet the underlying inventory (new Autograph; Design) keeps me loyal to their program. Without necessarily intending to, I naturally gravitate more towards Marriott props than any other brand (tho I have status with all). That is slowly shifting now with PH/Choice; SLH/Hilton; M&MS/Hyatt, but I am still able to consistently book my fav combo of cheap- point nights attached to a NUA. Hilton generally wayyy too many points/no upgrade til arrival; Hyatt’s that I truly adore (M&MS)/Dreams offer few Globalist benies & those hard-earned upgrades go wasting.
We just stayed at a resort-like Marriott over the holiday for a wedding that had $0 self-parking; very nice working/maintained M Club Lounge; excellent free full buffet breakfast (incl grat) at EITHER their restaurant or M Lounge for elites; free super-nice huge & nicely furnished Executive suite elite upgrade entire 3-nt stay.
Marriott at least made it possible (like Hilton) to get status with their credit card. Those old days of little help with Titanium EQNs from cards could be tough! I wish Hyatt would follow suit. And to complete my own list, I wish Hilton would just cool it already for 146,000 points at a Hilton Garden Inn in Lenox MA (when Mr & Mes Smith is only 16.5 for the same fall dates!). And come on Hyatt, I earned the dang FNC – let me apply an upgrade already! Each program has their own peculiar pros & cons, but when it comes down to which property really gets me excited about a stay, well that’s still generally Marriott for me.
Without enforcement of promised benefits, no other program improvements matter. Do you really want even more opportunities for your expectations to go unmet?
The chains are sadly not in the hospitality business anymore, they are in the property development business. We are not their customers, we are the bait. I’m not a litigious person, but don’t expect anything on this front to get better until there is some class action lawsuit or threat of prosecution on false advertising, fraud, etc compelling the chains to enforce what they promise us baitfish.
Marriott isn’t even a property developer. Marriott is a hotel booking platform with a side hustle of managing hotels mostly flagged under four or five brands. Overall, Marriott manages less than 30% of all its hotels, across all brands.
Honestly, I’ll be completely fine if they just simply had free nights certificates available with each spending landmark. For example, free 35k certificate with each 15k of spend.
Breakfast, if not at a meal ticket to a restaurant is usually the sad combination of bland oatmeal, basic eggs, cheap cereal. salty sausage and yogurt/fruit that could be bought elsewhere for $1. Stateside breakfast at most places sucks. You guys get excited about that?
i agree that happens in the US properties but The overseas Marriott breakfast is usually fantastic………………..sad when they don’t want to give you any breakfast at all..that happened to me in Amsterdam even though i’m Titanium and lifetime Platinum member….
These are fair and reasonable requests. They are not inconsistent with features of other programs. But, as Jonathan (at the bottom) noted, Marriott knows about these issues and it would have dealt with them if they in fact wanted.
Allow Ritz Carlton Card club upgrades to be used on any booking.
Allow FNCs to be used on points-plus-cash award bookings.
Since the practical elimination of “no blackout dates,” require properties to offer more robust award inventory. Not simply one or two base category rooms on a given date. When they’re gone, they’re gone. And, there’s nothing more.
@Lee – I’ve had success with my last couple RC stays paying $100/nt extra for Club Level (attached to a NUA). We had family in over the 4th so could make good use of the Club. It was well worth the extra cost, esp considering the extra hundreds asked for the upgrade if originally booked into Club Level.
You added club access at check-in for $100 per night? Thanks for the tip.
There’s absolutely no way Marriott will do all of this, so I think rather than a kitchen sink approach it would be better to apply pressure for certain targeted fixes.
Waived resort fees should be at the top of the list, but at this stage, I think they’re too lucrative for franchisees. At other chains, the policy is likely a holdover from before a Holiday Inn Express in Dubuque would charge a $10 “resort fee” for printing and a voucher for 15% off at a restaurant down the block. These used to be fees only at high end resorts in leisure destinations so the number of impacted franchisees at other chains were low meaning waived award stay resort fees was a low cost policy to implement. All in one pricing policy at the legislative level would fix this, but that’s neither here nor there.
The breakfast benefit is hugely low hanging fruit. Imo even if they ape Hilton’s stingy policy of a defined cost benefit, it’d be better than needing a cipher and flowchart to figure out when someone will get free breakfast. $35 pp at higher end properties feels right.
SUAs at time of booking would be great but again, this would cut down on monetization from franchisees, Marriott’s true customer base. Maybe they’d do it at the Titanium tier.
Allowing unlimited topoff (or maybe free night award + 30k rather than 15k) would be great, as would allowing guests to book any room under the applicable free night award cap (i.e., if a suite costs 75k at a property, you should be able to book it!). I don’t think either of these would directly cost franchisees so long as the rack rate on reimbursement from corporate is adjusted. These seem like low-hanging fixes that won’t cost franchisees.
Anyways, sorry for getting rambly; I think limited fixes that won’t overall cost franchisees more is the only direction Marriott corporate would take on program improvements.
Certainly, actual execution on fixes would be as you say. But, the purpose of the article is to express Greg’s wish list. Allow Greg . . . and all of us . . . to dream. Of course, if Greg asked Marriott to throw in a Founders Card membership with Platinum tier status, then I’d say he’s crossed the line.
Free parking and waived resort fees for Platinums and up.
I dispute that this is asking Marriott to be Hyatt.
Waive resort fees on award stays: As TFM points out, this is most hotel chains except Marriott.
Fix the Platinum Elite free breakfast benefit: This is IHG and Hyatt. Hilton is actually even more of a garbage fire.
Clear Nightly Upgrade Awards from the time of booking: This is IHG and Hyatt. We know Hilton has looked at this. I could see Wyndham rolling out something like this in the effort to be T-Mobile-like and “un”-carrier.
Remove the 15K limit on free night certificate top-offs: This is IHG. And Hilton (sort of… their certificates are only one type… awesome). Hyatt is actually quite bad at this.
Make Bonvoy credit cards more rewarding for spend: This is sort of a weird ask because no hotel company or airline has a worthwhile base spend card that is competitive with 2% cashback or 2 CapitalOne points. I would have left this off. A more realistic ask is a points transfer that makes a modicum of sense. Hyatt UR 1:1 transfers are positive expected value relative to cashing out UR points. Choice and Wyndham transfers also make sense from time to time. Hilton, when at 1:2.6, isn’t crazy. We know Marriott and Chase can do 1:1.7 and make the economics work. That should be permanent. IHG transfers make no sense. Be less like IHG!
I think all the Facebook fan asks are nutty and were right to be left off… with the exception of:
Add meaningful Titanium elite benefits above those offered to Platinum elites. They really have done a horrible job incentivizing post 50 nights folks. Especially when they give away 30 nights with credit cards for nearly free.
I’d also add my own:
Copy Hilton mobile check in tech (which actually works).
Copy Hyatt mobile “view bill” tech.
Both of these features are very sticky/addictive and palpably move NPS whenever I experience them.
As I said in an earlier comment:
The franchise and license agreement that owners sign with Marriott envisions waived resort or destination fees for certain tiers within the loyalty program. Marriott has just never implemented this.
I definitely agree that Marriott needs to do something for titanium and ambassadors. There’s no reason to keep staying after qualifying or re-qualifying.
I do think platinum should have its lounge access eliminated or reduced to four annual passes. Within North America, I suspect there are very few platinums who actually stay 50 nights.
Either that or raise the number of nights required. There is some precedent for this as a night is no longer a night at some of the cheaper Marriott brands — a definition change that seems to have been instituted to stop mattress runs.
You’re going to be shocked but the most common status is Titanium, not Platinum. If you do a week of travel/hotel stays a month you’ll hit Titanium. And there is a lot of people who travel for work and stay at hotels that often from sales, to travel, nurses, construction , consultants, travel mechanics etc.
I’m not doubting the number of actual business travelers, but I’m confident that the number of platinums is higher.
The best is that Fairfield Inns in Asia don’t give breakfast somehow. Fairfields! In Asia!
I’m also annoyed by Marriott breakfasts that consist of a pastry and some sliced ham — because you only get continental as an elite. This is a slap in the face every time.
It’s a flaw. Fairfield was never included in the breakfast benefit because breakfast was always free for all guests. It was a complete oversight. Then Marriott decided to develop Fairfields in Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East with full-service restaurants. Despite some outcry, they’ve never fixed this.
If they do, they are not Marriott. Welcome to Bonvoy!