Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Since the August merger of the Marriott Rewards and SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) programs, Marriott has been working towards integrating the programs onto one technology platform. To-date, the integration hasn’t been smooth, but there are now signs of progress. I previously reported that Sheraton and Four Points hotels had been fully integrated into Marriott.com. And now, as of November 27th, many more brands are fully integrated: Design Hotels, Le Meridien, W, and Westin.
According to an inside source, the rest of the SPG brands (Aloft, Element, Luxury Collection, and St. Regis) will be fully integrated by December 11.
The integration is great for hotel members because it means that you can finally make use of Marriott.com’s best features. For example, you can do a points advance to make an award booking even if you don’t have enough points (you must acquire enough before your stay). And you can apply free night certificates online. Here’s the W Maldives for example, where I have the option to apply a points advance (If I had any 60K per night certificates in my account I’d be given the option to use those as well):
Travel Package Implications
If you bought a travel package before the program merger and if you were hoping to use your stay certificate at an SPG property, this should be good news. People have reported lots of issues with trying to apply stay certificates to SPG properties, but I expect that applying certificates will be easy for those properties that are integrated.
Look for St. Regis and the rest on and after December 11
According to an inside source, the rest of the SPG brands (Aloft, Element, Luxury Collection, and St. Regis) will be fully integrated by December 11.
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DP. Just successfully used my 7 night cert that I got from old mariott travel package on an SPG property that got integrated on december 11. Had to call in.
Great!
Looking forward to the luxury collection ones come December for a honeymoon 😀
I hope this will have a side-effect of allowing Marriott/Ritz-Carlton gift cards to be used at these properties.
Still working out some kinks on the travel certs – I have 5 night stay followed by a 2 night stay reserved on points – was told in the old system it would be no prob to combine these to apply a 7 night cert…new system doesn’t allow it, and award rooms are not available now. Marriott loyalty superv. said the property needs to block the room to create a new 7-night reservation , property manager says they can’t, call spg to do it. (what?)
Will keep you posted.
Are you able to apply 7-day travel certificates online?
Has to be called in
wow! you meant they’re not done with this “integration” yet.
Good information. Greg what intel can you provide regarding packages (certificates) used to book 7 night stays at DOE, Greece? Is Marriott allowing cancelling and rebooking at different resorts?
I just tried to book a Design Hotel (the Robey in Chicago) and it redirected me to starwoodhotels.com – are you sure that Design Hotels has been integrated?
I guess I was wrong about that one
I converted my 7 nights old category certificate (cat 6) to the new certificate (cat 1-4) in early September 2018 and it will expire in September 2019. Does Marriott allow an extension on the new converted certificate?
Absolutely perfect Timing on posting this. Thanks Greg. And a very valuable nugget of info. I am at 225,000 points and was wondering if I was going to be forced to transfer in 15,000 from Ultimate Rewards which is far from ideal (planned stay would be in June of 2019) – so thanks for that reminder as well