Loyalty Lobby reported last week that Marriott Bonvoy had devalued award bookings at a number of aspirational properties around the world by 5%-10%.
This was based on data collected by a Chinese award search tool called Zaozao. Based on examples given on some sites from the data provided by Zaozao, it certainly initially looked like Marriott had bumped up the award pricing at those select properties.
The thing is, when investigating it myself, I wasn’t necessarily encountering the same pricing that was being reported.
For starters, I checked Marriott bookings I’ve made in the last year. These were a mix of both cash rates and award rates; on my spreadsheet where I track what we’ve paid or redeemed, for cash rates I also make a note of what the award pricing would’ve been.
For upcoming stays, I checked pricing for those same dates. For past stays, I checked the pricing for similar dates next year, but on the same days of the week rather than the same specific dates in 2027 (seeing as weekend rates can differ greatly from weekday rates). In all those instances, there was no discernible difference in pricing. Pricing tended to be either the same or within 1K-2K points—something you’d expect to see with dynamic award pricing.
That said, the reports weren’t that there had been a devaluation of Marriott Bonvoy awards across the board. It was that select aspirational properties around the globe had been devalued. When checking those too, I struggled to match the reported findings.
For example, the London EDITION is listed in one of the articles as increasing from 107K points to 115K, but I’m seeing dates as low as 70,400 points. In fact, even August – prime time in London – has nearly every single day of the month bookable for 100K or fewer points. When checking October, more than a third of those dates are bookable for fewer than 115K points. There are certainly numerous dates in the booking calendar where pricing is 115K or more, but that’s also the nature of Marriott’s dynamic pricing.
Similarly, the Ritz Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands is listed as increasing from 168K to 176K. However, when checking pricing I saw awards starting at 142K and hardly any dates at all hitting that purported 176K mark until the end of October, so this could just be seasonal variability to some extent.
What I haven’t be able to ascertain is if Zaozao has also been tracking cash rates for these properties and, if so, if those have also increased for the dates where they’re seeing award pricing increases. If cash rates have indeed also gone higher, that points to this being less of an award devaluation and more of an award repricing to correspond with the higher cash rates. While that would be a devaluation in terms of you having to redeem more points, it wouldn’t necessarily be a devaluation in terms of your Marriott Bonvoy points being worth less than before.
We’ve reached out to Gondola which provides us with data for both award bookings and cash rates at Marriott properties to see if we can identify any kind of wider devaluation. In the meantime though, while you might see higher prices at aspirational properties that you’ve been keeping an eye on, I’ve not been able to discern a definite devaluation.
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I have two bookings for next Feb using points. When I went back and choose the same dates at the same properties both are pricing out at 10% more then what I paid.
I wonder if “dynamic” pricing also uses cookies, regional location as well as Elite status/points/FNC/recent stays/redemptions/redemption type in the pricing calculus. (So far I’m not convinced su
if somethings of these are/aren’t used)
I know some people feel the airlines do a similar thing when shopping a route and returning. I belive its the case with some airlines for upgrade offers – for infrequent fliers.
Nearly every major corporation is using surveillance pricing and micro-targeting us to extract as much from us as possible, unless and until jurisdictions outlaw those oppressive and deceptive practices.
We really need better leaders who actually protect and serve the people, not act as mercenaries for these special interests. The best we can do for now is simply scale back on spending (yeah, maybe close that co-branded card, too. Sowie.)
Merely *some* and not *all*?? Huh!