Sure, the title is a little bit clickbaity but the message is real. If you have AMEX Membership Reward or Membership Reward Select Points and want to maximize your Marriott points, you need to transfer them to SPG right now because a devaluation is a comin’.
The Current Transfer Ratio
Right now, in order to get Marriott points from your Membership Rewards, you need to transfer them through the SPG program. You can transfer 2 Membership Rewards to 1 SPG point. From there, assuming you’ve linked your SPG and Marriott account, you can transfer 1 SPG to 3 Marriott points, so basically:
2 MR –> 1 SPG –> 3 Marriott
Let’s work in 1,000 point increments so you can see the results between the old ratio and the new ratio:
1,000 MR –> 500 SPG –> 1,500 Marriott
The New Transfer Ratio
American Express has just released the new transfer ratio to Marriott as the SPG program will cease to exist in August. Spoiler … it’s not great but not horrible.
Let’s use that 1,000 point example again to see the result:
1,000 MR –> 1,200 Marriott
This means that there will be a 300 point Marriott reduction on a 1,000 point MR transfer, which is a 20% depreciation of Membership Reward points.
What Should I Do?
I think it’s fairly obvious but if you have some AMEX Membership Rewards available, you need to transfer them IMMEDIATELY. I don’t know if you caught the fine print but there is a very important date to keep in mind.
Limited Window
According to the AMEX posted information, as of August 4th, the transfer program to SPG will end, however, AMEX is “conveniently” doing maintenance on their system to facilitate these types of transfers from July 27 – August 9th, so effectively, your last day to take advantage of the better transfer ratio is July 26th.
Conclusion
It couldn’t last forever but I’ve been very pleased with the arbitrage opportunity that has been in place for the last couple of years since Marriott’s acquisition of SPG. While the news sucks, at least we have 5 days to make those last minute transfers. In our experience here at PointsNerd, AMEX MR transfers to SPG take 1 day but that could change due to the expected onslaught of people making requests.
When it comes to travel and Travel Hacking, one of the most useful sites out there for the accessories you need while travelling is Amazon.ca. I use it almost exclusively to get all my handy travel gadgets like battery packs, neck pillows, and great things like cooling towels.
For those that shop Amazon, you’ll know that they sometimes come up with new promotions to feature new payment systems and they’ve done it again with Amazon Cash.
What is Amazon Cash?
Amazon Cash is a new payment method with Amazon that allows you to pay with cash, debit or credit card in a brick and mortar store.
The main gist of it is that you print off a barcode or verify your phone number on your Amazon account and then go to a participating retailer (currently only Canada Post Offices). Show them your barcode or give them your phone number and pay. That’s it. The credit immediately shows up on your Amazon account for you to use.
From what people have told me, the $25 credit shows up within 20 minutes of you loading the $100 on your Amazon Cash account, so as long as you are close to a Canada Post location, you’re golden.
The Small Print
There are a few caveats to keep in mind and I would encourage you to read the Terms and Conditions but here are the highlights:
Amazon Cash transaction must occur between 12:01 am (PT) on July 9, 2018 and 11:59 pm (PT) July 17, 2018.
Offer limited to the first-time a customer uses Amazon Cash.
Offer only applies to products sold by Amazon.ca (look for “sold by Amazon.ca” on the product detail page). Products sold by third-party sellers or other Amazon entities will not qualify for this offer, even if “fulfilled by Amazon.ca” or “Prime Eligible”.
Offer limited to one per customer and account
The maximum benefit you may receive from this offer is CAD$ 25.00 off products sold by Amazon.ca.
Promotional code expires at 11:59 p.m. (PT) August 31, 2018.
The big takeaway here is that the $25 credit expires on August 31st, 2018 so be sure to make your Amazon purchase prior. Also remember that in order to use your $25 credit, you will need to find an item sold by Amazon, like in the picture below.
The Double Dip
Sure, this is a good deal but wanna make it a better deal? Thought so.
Until the end of the year, Great Canadian Rebates is offering up to 4.5% cash back on Amazon purchases. This means you can earn up to 4.5% cash back while still receiving your $25 credit from Amazon.
Let’s say you load $100 through Amazon Cash. You would receive a $25 credit. If you then used GCR to make your purchase, you would receive up to 4.5% cash back, so …
$125 purchase for $100 out of pocket and you would receive up to $5.63 cash back.
This means your $125 purchase cost you $94.37, a savings of $30.63, which is 24.5% off!
That’s a good deal in my books.
Also, you can keep using GCR for the rest of the year and receive up to 4.5% cash back on every purchase!
Conclusion
If you use Amazon … and realistically who doesn’t? This is a great opportunity to save some real money and with Amazon Prime Days coming up, it’s a great time to have some extra credit with your favourite online retailer. Hurry up. You have to load your Amazon Cash by July 17th!
Previously, the Marriott Travel Package represented incredible value, especially during the Marriott/SPG transition period where SPG Points transferred to Marriott Points at a 1:3 ratio. Jayce covered off these packages extensively but long story short, you essentially got a free 7-night hotel stay when you transferred your Marriott points to an airline program you needed points in anyways.
Now that Marriott has announced that they will be revamping the program, it deserves a second look to determine if you should load up on Travel Packages before August 1st or if you should wait.
What’s Changed?
In short – a lot.
First off, in the old program (I’m going to call everything pre-August 2018 the “old program”), there were 4 different packages based on what airline you wanted to transfer your point to. You would first need to determine the airline points you needed, look for it in the small print and then determine how many Marriott Points you required in order to initiate the transfer.
With the new program, there is only one award chart for every airline that participates.
Additions and Subtractions
In order to properly compare the old and the new packages, we first need to see what has changed in terms of the airline transfer partners. If you don’t look at the packages closely, you might miss out on a couple of interesting tidbits.
Effective August 1, 2019, the following airlines will no longer be redeemable for the Travel Package: GOL and JetBlue
Effective August 1, 2019, the following airlines will allow for points transfers through the Travel Package: Aegean, China Southern, Hainan, Thai, Virgin Australia
All in all, the airlines that we are losing as transfer partners are fairly insignificant while the additions are pretty good … but at what cost?
The Maths
In order to do an apples to apples comparison of the old and new packages, we need to try to control for some variables. In order to do that, we must make some concessions and assumptions, namely:
The old Category 1-5 is equivalent to the new Category 1-4
We will assume the hotel stay certificate holds no value for the purposes of this calculation
The subtraction of GOL and JetBlue and the addition of Aegean, China Southern, Hainan, Thai and Virgin Australia have no bearing in the comparison
Based on this, I have calculated the cost of an airline point in Marriott Reward Points for the old program and the new program.
As you can see, the new Marriott Travel Packages only outperforms the old Package 4. The interesting thing is that Package 4 was for JetBlue, an airline that isn’t part of the new Travel Package anyways.
If we eliminate the old Package 4, we can see that in no instance does the new Travel Package represent a better deal.
Conclusion
If you ever had an eye on the Marriott Travel Package, I would encourage you to get into one prior to August 1, 2018 as the new program represents poor value. That being said, if you were looking to redeem for the airlines in the old Package 2, you aren’t that much further behind, though it will certainly cost you a little bit more.
If you are close to being able to redeem for the old Travel Package and need some points in order to do so, I would encourage you to purchase SPG points as you can currently get a 35% bonus on points purchase through July 20th. Click the banner below for details.
As we delve deeper into Marriott’s announcement of their point requirements for free hotel stays, we start to unravel the information to understand what we should be doing to extract value out of the transition period.
For those that aren’t quite up to speed on what’s happening, I’ll try to break it down in a nutshell.
What Happened?
I won’t go into dates and times but rather, I’ll give you a general understanding of the key highlights.
Marriott purchased Starwood hotels and has taken over all of Starwood’s hotels. Hotel brands will remain the same but Marriott will now be the operator of those hotels.
In terms of the loyalty programs, SPG had a fantastic loyalty program called Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) which had many very loyal enthusiasts. The Starwood program’s points (SPG) was actually worth more than the points issued by Marriott (Marriott Rewards) so Marriott decided to allow for the transfer of SPG to Marriott Rewards at a 1:3 ratio. This left many opportunities for arbitrage like the Marriott Travel Packages that we wrote extensively about.
When it came to using points for free hotel stays, the Starwoods and Marriott redemption schedules were different, meaning Marriott needed to come up with a plan to align the two. Marriott was left with the task of re-examining the over 6,500 hotels worldwide to come up with an equitable way to price out point redemptions. This realignment would need to be fair to Marriott Rewards Members, previous SPG Member, and the hotels themselves. This was no doubt a gargantuan task but Marriott managed to pull it off and released the redemption schedule for all of their hotels earlier in the week.
Okay, But Why Do I Care?
First off, stop being so cynical. Geesh.
The reason you should care is that Marriott has left a small window of incredible opportunity. As Marriott makes the transition of incorporating all hotels under this new structure, they have allowed for a “cooling off” period that allows users of both the Marriott and SPG program to fully understand and embrace the program.
It’s kinda like when you get a new step-mother and she lets you have Froot Loops for dinner only to force you to eat broccoli and liver after you’ve let down your guard a couple of months in. Thanks a lot “mom” … I can never trust again.
The time for Froot Loop is now people.
Between August 1st and December 31st, 2018, Marriott will NOT implement two very important things to their program:
Seasonality – new to the program is the ability for each hotel to set their own Low, Normal, and Peak season. This is important because each hotel is able to theoretically set its own pricing structure based on what they believe are their peak times. My main concern about this is that while I fully expect hotels to properly set their Standard and Peak seasons, I have a hard time believing that hotels will voluntarily set dates for their Off Peak (aka Low) Seasons. This takes away the certainty you used to get with a standard award chart.
A New Category 8 – Marriott will get rid of Tiers that hotels like the Ritz used to use and will introduce a new Category 8 which is significantly more expensive than any of the other categories. You can see from the chart above that Category 8 hotels have a big jump up from Category 7 in comparison to increases from other adjacent tiers.
What Does This Mean Exactly?
Geesh – you really like getting to the point eh?
This means that between August 1 and December 31, 2018, all future Category 8 hotels will be priced at Category 7 prices AND priced at Standard Rates regardless of when the reservation is for.
After January 1st, expect to pay a LOT more.
Let’s take a look at something that almost everyone might be interested in. A free hotel stay at the W Hotel in the Maldives.
Currently, the W Maldives is a Category 7 SPG hotel, meaning that it will cost you 30,000 SPG points a night, which is the equivalent of 90,000 Marriott points (1 SPG = 3 Marriott Reward Points).
On August 1, 2018, the W and every other former SPG hotel will fall under the Marriott umbrella and between August 1st and December 31st, the hotel will be priced at the Standard Category 7 hotel price, which is 60,000 Marriott Reward Points. After January 1, 2019, the hotel will become a Category 8 hotel.
So here’s the per night breakdown based on timing (in Marriott points):
Book between now and July 31st, 2018 – 90,000 Marriott Reward Points
Book between August 1st, 2018 and December 31st, 2018 – 60,000 Marriott Reward Points
Book after January 1st, 2019 – 70,000/85,000/100,000 Marriott Reward Points based on Low/Standard/Peak season
So What Should I Book?
Ah, the question that everyone wants the answer to. Unfortunately, there is no perfect answer but what I can do is give you a general guideline of what you should be looking for. From there you should base the decision on where you intend on travelling.
In general, you should be looking to book hotels that are going to be cheaper between 8/1/18 and 12/31/18 AND cheaper than if you booked them right now.
I took a look at the Google Sheet that I put together for this point announcement and threw in some logic into the sheet so you can now see when PointsNerd suggests you book your hotels.
You aren’t going to be the only one trying to get space in that hotel for an award redemption so be warned. I expect competition for top-end aspirational properties to be fierce. That’s why you’re reading this and preparing for battle.
But you could do something a bit risky to better your chances …
Please Tell Me
Oh … well, look who found their manners all of a sudden.
If you know what hotel you want to book and are anxious at the thought of no inventory being left when August 1st comes around, you can make a speculative booking now and call in after August 1st for a refund of the difference in points.
Marriott seemingly encourages this.
So the takeaway here is – book now, get a refund later.
What If My Hotel Is A SPG Hotel?
That’s when things get a little bit more complicated. SPG does not allow for holds on hotel rooms but rather requires you to have enough points to book.
This is a lot more challenging because not everyone has enough points to book the very aspirational properties we talked about earlier like the W Maldives even if you get a refund later.
So what can you do?
Well, you have two choices:
Do what 95% of the population will do, which is wait until August 1st and battle it out like it’s Thunderdome.
Or you can get yourself some points.
The only way to do that currently is to purchase points. Luckily SPG is currently offering a 35% bonus on all purchased points if you make your purchase of over 5,000 SPG points prior to July 2oth.
Normally, I wouldn’t recommend purchasing points but the bonus on this is pretty good and the timing is just about perfect to take advantage of some of those aspirational properties that SPG has that will transition to Marriott in a month’s time.
Essentially, you are prepurchasing Marriott points.
One caveat, you need to have had your SPG account open for at least 14 days before you can purchase points.
Conclusion
My God that was a lot to cover off.
The short version of this whole diatribe is that there is an unbelievably good opportunity to maximize your SPG and Marriott points in the period between August 1 and December 31st of 2018. That being said, there are plenty of Marriott properties that are better to book now than after August 1st, so take a look at the chart closely and figure out what makes sense for you and your family.
