Marriott’s dynamic pricing has now gone live and while it’s bad news for some properties, there’s been a pleasantly surprising result that award stays at many hotels are now cheaper than they were 24 hours ago.
I’d booked three award stays over the course of the next few months and all three have gotten cheaper with the introduction of dynamic pricing.
For example, my wife is riding RAGBRAI this summer – a 430 mile bike ride that runs across Iowa from west to east. The route is different each year and this year they’re setting off from Sergeant Bluff. Just before that begins, we’ll be staying five nights in nearby Sioux City. The total cost before the change to dynamic pricing (including the Stay for 5, Pay for 4 benefit) was 60,000 points.
When checking the pricing last night after dynamic pricing had come in to play, I’d expected to see some kind of increase in award costs. My expectations were wrong though because it now costs less. It had decreased to 58,500 points which, while only being a difference of 1,500 points, meant I rebooked our stay to pay that lower rate.
Before RAGBRAI, we’ll be spending a few weeks exploring Iowa (stop laughing back there). We’ll be staying six nights in Des Moines during that time and previously booked a stay costing a total of 100,000 points.
The difference in award costs for that stay with dynamic pricing were even more striking. That six night stay now only costs 86,000 points, a drop of 14%.
It’s not like the award pricing dropped because the cash price was particularly low either. Marriott Bonvoy points appear to have retained far more value than I was giving them credit for after the announced changes but before the changes came into play.
For example, that five night stay in Sioux City which is now only 58,500 points would cost $972.85 in cash. That’s 1.66 cpp of value which is surprisingly high, although there are a couple of factors at play here. First, with it being a five night award stay, the cheapest of those nights is free which improves the redemption value. Second, three of the nights would normally cost $124.96 per night with the other two nights being significantly higher at $298.77 (presumably a feature of ~8,500 RAGBRAI riders being in the area). If our stay would’ve cost $124.96 for every night, that would’ve been 1.07 cpp of value.
While that’s nowhere near as good as 1.66 cpp, that’s still far higher than I was giving Marriott credit for when they announced their plans to price award nights dynamically. It also shows that it’s still possible at some properties to get outsized value redeeming points even when cash prices are very high.
Our stay in Des Moines is another example of this. That six night stay now costing a total of 86,000 points would cost $1,655.36 if paying cash. That’s 1.92 cpp of value – even better than our Sioux City stay. The fact that our award stay dropped in price with the introduction of dynamic pricing to give us almost 2 cpp of value was a very nice surprise.
The Bad News
Before these changes came into play, Marriott provided a list of ~200 properties that would cost noticeably more with dynamic pricing. One of those properties was the Le Meridien Maldives, a brand new hotel that Greg and Nick visited last year and loved.
The Le Meridien Maldives was a category 5 property which meant that it previously cost 35,000 points per night at standard rates. That was great news for many people because provided it wasn’t at peak pricing, it was bookable with 35,000 point free night certificates that come with some Marriott credit cards.
A five night stay (again, utilizing the Stay for 5, Pay for 4 benefit) previously cost 140,000 points for a Beach Bungalow and 190,000 points for a Sunrise Overwater Villa as there’s been great award availability at this property recently.
Those same dates now cost 200,000 points and 250,000 points respectively – a massive jump.
Check Pricing Of Current Stays & Rebook
If you have any Marriott award stays currently booked, be sure to check their current pricing. If it’s a property like the Le Meridien Maldives which has gone up in price, you’ll obviously want to keep your existing reservations.
However, if you’re lucky like me and have reservations that price out more cheaply with dynamic pricing than they did before, it could be worth cancelling and rebooking them.
Check Pricing For Free Night Certificates
Even if you don’t have any existing reservations to rebook, it’d be worth checking pricing if you have free night certificates to redeem. Seeing as some properties have dropped in price with the launch of dynamic pricing, you might find your free night certificates can now be redeemed for properties and/or dates where they were previously out of reach due to the previous off-peak/standard/peak pricing setup.
Certificate Top-Up Date Still To Be Announced
Marriott advised last month that they’ll be launching a new feature whereby you’ll be able to top up free night certificates with up to 15,000 points in order to book a more expensive property with your certificates.
At the time they said this feature would be launched in April. They’ve since confirmed that this feature will still be going live at some point in April, but the exact date is still to be announced.
Question
Have you gotten lucky and been able to rebook awards for cheaper? Or are stays you wanted to book now more expensive? Let us know in the comments below.
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I have seven different properties booked with points. Every single one increased. Expected in Hawaii and Paris, but it even increased in El Paso, Texas.
I booked 3 nights in September at the St. Regis Osaka. Pre dynamic pricing they cost 60k/60k/50k. Now, they each cost 54k, so a slight win. I’m eagerly waiting to be able to top off certs so I can swap out 2 of those nights on points to 50k certs + points.
P.S. I have a 5 night reservation at W Verbier in early January that went up from 400k to 455.5k. That’s still 1.3cpp so technically pretty good. I’m still pushing the eject button on Bonvoy though, I’m tired of constant games to not provide elite benefits, junk fees on award reservations, and everything else.
Prior to March 29th I booked a 5 night stay at the Ritz Carlton Maldives ( Feb peak pricing) for 400k points. Utilizing the 5th free. With fees and transfers it will cost us approximately $1400.
Cash value of same trip was over $17k.
Now, the same trip is over 700k points and I can’t find over water bungalows for redemption. Only beach suites. Maybe they are now off the table for only cash reservations.
Either way I think both pre and post March 29th change over, the cash per point valuation is extraordinary high for what the ritz is changing for cash rates.
Cheers
can a free night certificate from a credit card be used to book an stay for someone else?
Here are the rules for Marriott: https://frequentmiler.com/gift-hotel-points-free-night-certificates-and-award-nights-booked-with-points-rules-by-program/#Marriott_Bonvoy-3
Welcome to Iowa! I am planning to ride RAGBRAI this year. Hopefully we can meet up!
I’m taking the easy way out because I’m going to be my wife’s support driver, but I’ll be heading to the meetup towns at lunch and then each overnight city at the end of each day, so that’ll hopefully be possible.
I am sure your wife will appreciate the support! A lot of the old timers are not very happy with this year’s route.
Is that because it’s tougher than previous years?
Before dynamic pricing we have two rooms booked in April at the St Regis in Puerto Rico the cost of each room was 385,000 points. I checked today for the same dates after dynamic pricing was implemented and the cost is now 458,500 points. Almost a 20% markup. I checked other dates at this same resort and many seem to be marked up at least by 20%. Very disappointing! I suspect at the higher end properties the value of my Marriott bonvoy points has decreased greatly after this dynamic pricing implementation.
I had 5th night booked at Le Méridien Saigon for 72k, the price is now down to 58k, just re booked
Similar data point. Mine went from 72k to 54k at the same hotel.
Woohoo! 20% drop on 3 nights in Valencia (Spain). Thanks Stephen!
Excellent. Booked Marriott Petra (Jordan) for two nights, 60k total.
Now rebooked for 45k total. 25% drop. 🙂
I’m still breaking up with Marriott once my points hit zero, due to how they utterly, utterly let us down with a Homes & Villas 5-day rez last year. We lost 230k points and wound up staying in a Hyatt Place. #bonvoyed extreme!
I have 3 reservations that decreased. I saved 12k, 1k, and 1k in Doha, Singapore, and the Dead Sea. Other reservations that I plan to covering using certs also went down requiring less top off when that becomes available.
Horrendous repricing with points. I booked for one night June 12 at the JW Marriott in Marco Island, FL. Two days ago (3/28) when booked it was 50,000 points per night. Today that same room is 92,000 points. Marriott said it was going up but that is almost a 50% increase. Granted, the 50,000 point night was an off-peak booking, but wow that stings a lot.
Last month I booked five nights in Hawaii for 240k. Same reservation is now pricing out over 350k.
Make sure you book first then cancel. If you have points/certs in both P1/P2 accounts, you can “bounce” back’n’forth. Otherwise Marriott’s computer “knows” what you are doing so to speak. Moxy in Southampton UK went from 12,500 originally to 8,500 and then re-booked after canceling went to 14,000. My first pass at re-booking a Paris/UK trip in May, so learned quickly. Oh, on two separate computers, two separate sign-ins, even incognito did not get around the rate increase. So lost 1,500 on that stay, but another stay got a 35K e-cert released for another trip. A lot of effort, but worth close to 18K net increase by re-booking. It’s the game.
You actually don’t even need to cancel, you can just edit the existing reservation to the lower point price and the difference in points is redeposited into your account immediately. It took me 5 minutes yesterday to change 6 reservations by doing it this way, and I saved over 100k points altogether. This works with Hilton too.
Plus, with the points being completely dynamic now, it will be worthwhile to periodically check how many points are needed by clicking on “view/modify” then “edit room” and checking the newest point requirement for your reservation.
i had a reservation for Orlando for the summer…it went down 9k points in total
The dynamic pricing kicked in at midnight last night and it is far worse than Marriott published. It was completely misleading. All the category 8 hotels that they said would go up by as much as 20K actually went up 35K, a 41% increase!! Bookings I had or looked at went from 85K per night to 119,500 point per night! It looks like they made all those 85k nights that used to be standard night awards peak awards to bump them to 100K, then added the 20K on top of that.
This is the worst devaluation of points on any program I have ever seen!!
Marriott should be held accountable for what they published as it is completely false and many people likely made decisions based on this information.
https://help.marriott.com/s/article/Article-33764