A lot of people booked Marriott travel packages before Marriott & SPG unified. The hope was that because it wasn’t possible to map over to the new award chart directly that Marriott would be generous and those with specific packages would get a great deal. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and it was basically the worst case scenario. To make matters worse before announcing how the packages would map over Marriott stated that existing package holders wouldn’t be able to downgrade/upgrade and they wouldn’t be able to book properties again until September 18th.
Some good news for those in that situation:
- Partial refunds. If you booked a category 6, 8 or tier 1-3 package you can receive a one time exchange for a package one category lower. This is being done as those packages can be used at the same properties as the category below them (e.g category 6 is the same as category 5). To request a refund click here and select ‘packages-deals’ .
- Trade certificates for points. You can trade your seven night certificates for points, category 1-5 will give you a 45,000 point refund and then categories above that will receive the difference in cost. Break down for other categories is as follows:
- Category 1-5: 45,000 points
- Category 6: 75,000 points
- Category 7: 105,000 points
- Category 8: 135,000 points
- Category 9: 165,000 points
- Properties bookable now. You can now use your certificates immediately rather than having to wait until September 18th.
It’s not clear how things will work exactly for those with five night certificates vs seven night in terms of trading certificates. Those five night certificates normally require you being a time share member but I know lots of readers were able to book them without that being the case.
Hat tip to OMaaT
