Marriott Bonvoy Eliminates Award Charts, Will Be Fully Dynamic Pricing

They hit him in the face with Marriott a day after he said he was in love with it. Benjy had a bad timing. This is something that we all saw coming. Did you think Marriott wouldn't follow suit after seeing Hilton and IHG? Hyatt is always a step behind on the devaluation train, which is a good thing for us, because they went mini dynamic with their peak and off peak pricing. There are some questions left to answer after Marriott Bonvoy eliminated award charts. What does that mean for us?

The hammer drops tomorrow so lock up any redemptions you may have left.

Marriott Bonvoy Eliminates Award Charts – Details

The Marriott Bonvoy program has an award chart with peak, standard and off peak pricing. Hyatt is moving to this system today.

Marriott will be transitioning to flexible points redemption rates per mile at a time and will be kicking the award chart to the curb. Key dates are listed here.

• Dynamic pricing, or flexible points redemption rates, will go into effect in March of 2022.
• For the rest of 2022 the pricing of the vast majority of hotels will hover between the old peak and non peak pricing.
• Once 2023 rolls around there will be no more price ranges for hotels.

The wild wild west will be very similar to what we see now with a slight change in the year 2022.

What This Change Mean For Us?

When a program goes to dynamic pricing, the value of the program currency is diminished. There will be times where it works in your favor, but it will be a negative more often than not.

There is a relationship between the old award chart and the dynamic pricing of other programs. The prices are usually the same regardless of the season, location and popularity of the hotel. I would expect Marriott to do the same thing. They may float more towards the peak pricing end of things, but cost should be in line with previous levels a lot of the time.

There will be hotels that play games. The Marriot Bonvoy category 5 free night certificates are going to get a lot more difficult to use in the future, I think, because the hotel I used to use has award prices of 41,000 points.

The 5th night free on award stays perk is still there. If you find an underpriced hotel, you will be able to continue to reduce your cost.

I think there will be some hotels that will drop in price since their category ranking never quite matched up to the quality of the hotel. We hope we can crowd source some of these options.

Marriott Bonvoy Eliminates Award Charts – Final Thoughts

It is not a good thing for the end user when award charts are eliminated. The award prices are no longer static as cash prices change.

I get the change from a business point of view. When points are used, they get stuck paying a higher cash rate, which increases the cost of the program. If they can charge more, it reduces their exposure.

There is value in keeping a program at the top of the market. Marriott has not done a good job since taking over the portfolio. You need people interested in the program to be able to sell points to banks and credit card companies.

At least you still have some time to maximize the points left in your account.  You should be able to find similar value to what you have now until 2023. After that point you will need to decide if the value is there to continue giving your loyalty to the program.

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