This morning Marriott unveiled award pricing for every hotel in the combined Marriott / Ritz / SPG program effective August 2018 (See: NOW LIVE: New Marriott SPG Award Category Assignments). And, while I was crunching numbers, Nick published his initial thoughts: New Marriott award chart: first reactions.
If you’d like to see details of my analyses, click here for details. For everyone else, here were my findings:
- Average (mean) award prices remain roughly the same.
- More hotels will be cheaper in the new program vs more expensive (52% will be cheaper, 31% more expensive)
- Top Tier SPG properties will be cheaper under the new program (as expected).
- Top Tier Marriott properties will be more expensive under the new program (as expected).
- Only 2 current Category 9 Marriott hotels are going down in price! (Fairfield Inn & Suites Ocean City, and Residence Inn Ocean City)
- Most top tier Marriott hotels go from 45K to 50K (new category 6)
- One Category 9 Marriott is going all the way up to new category 8 (Domes of Elounda, Autograph Collection).
- Current category 1-5 certificates become more valuable. If you have existing certificates we expect them to be replaced with 25K certificates in August.
- Very few Marriott category 1-5 hotels are going up in price above 25K in August (only 5!). This means that your category 1-5 certificates will retain their value.
- 4 Ritz properties will be bookable with these certificates starting in August
- 548 Marriott properties will drop down to 25K points per night and will then be bookable with these certificates.
- The 35K certificates that will come with SPG cards and the Marriott Premier Plus card will be quite valuable:
- 6,341 hotels will be bookable for 35K points or less
- This includes 27 Ritz properties worldwide and 5 in the US, plus 11 St. Regis hotels worldwide (none in the US).
- The 50K certificates that will come with the SPG Luxury card (and probably with a revamped Ritz card) will be extremely valuable. Within the US alone, these luxury brands will be available for 50K per night:
- Autograph Collection 24
- JW Marriott 10
- Le Meridien 3
- Luxury Collection 6
- Ritz-Carlton 16
- St. Regis 1
- Tribute Portfolio 3
- VISTA 9
SPG Category Mappings
Here are the actual category mappings for SPG properties from old to new. The % column shows the percent of hotels within the same original category that were assigned to this new category. Rows with very low percentages are not shown. I’ve highlighted in red where prices have gone up significantly and in green where prices go down significantly.
Keep in mind that the hotels that map to category 8 above will actually be category 7 (60K points) from August to early 2019.
Marriott & Ritz Chart Mappings
Here are the actual category mappings for Marriott & Ritz properties. The % column shows the percent of hotels within the same original category that were assigned to this new category. Rows with very low percentages are not shown. I’ve highlighted in red where prices have gone up significantly and in green where prices go down significantly.
Not surprisingly, almost all current top tier Marriott’s (Cat 9) are going up in price. 74% go up only 5K per night, but a significant percentage go up more.
More info
Please see our Marriott SPG Ritz Transition Guide, or click through to the guide via any of these topic links:
- Transition overview
- Unified award chart
- Potential chart mappings (old to new)
- Elite status transition
- Lifetime status transition
- Point earnings now vs. August
- Point transfers to Airline Miles
- Free night certificates
- Travel packages
- United & Delta partnerships
- Free breakfast / lounge access
- Suite Night Awards
- Credit card changes
- New program pros & cons
- Short term opportunities
- Q & A
- All Frequent Miler posts regarding the Marriott SPG transition
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