In September Marriott introduced peak and off peak pricing on award bookings. Properties can be moved from peak/off peak or standard on a monthly basis (looks like this happens mid month sometime perhaps). Unfortunately Marriott doesn’t automatically refund you the difference if a property moves to a cheaper price, so you need to cancel and then rebook. It looks like some properties have now moved from to a cheaper option so this is a friendly reminder to check your existing bookings.
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We really lucked out when, we booked a Marriott in Cape Town about .25 mile from Cape town stadium, for 5N it dropped to off-peak in September – shortly after re-reserving 5N at off peak -Cape town was selected to be a host city for this month Rugby series
10-tournament 2019/20 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series which started in Dubai and will end in France.
Rugby big outside the US, So it was like finding a property in a college FB bowl city for prices.
That said the cash price rocketed to more than the Cat 4/5 hotels because of the location.
But rebooking our reservations allowed to upgrade our hotels just from the point changes
Was wondering about this. I booked a reservation last month before the peak/off peak thing hit (didn’t know about it honestly). After I checked in for some reason I looked and saw the same night as off peak. They wouldn’t honor the discounted price. Luckily I needed another day and was able to book at the lower price
Thank you for the reminder. This is the second time I’ve checked and the rates have dropped again for my family’s stay on the big island.
Thanks DoC, just saved me 5K points by cancelling and rebooking a stay in San Juan!
I used to manufacture spend on SPG cards for the 1 SPG point per $
Now I have to think every year if its still worth to pay the AF for the free night.
You can get more points with a retention offer. They offer 20,000 points on the personal Bonvoy card. Maybe they offer even more on the Bonvoy Brilliant (not sure if it’s good after the first year, though).
Good point
I check a few times a month. I don’t understand why a Wednesday Night at LAX becomes peak price. Then again it’s BONVOY and nothing about it makes sense.
Thanks for the tip DoC! Unfortunately Marriott completely screwed up the point system and obliterated SPG into nonexistent.
I still haven’t nailed down when the change occurs, but I’ve had two properties go from off peak to standard. Each were within 30 days of each other, maybe two weeks apart, so not sure if they are hotel dependent or what.
I believe is hotel initiated as it sees fit. There is no set time intervals nor a program-wise timetable.
In Nov I have made a 5th night free bookings for first week of June at Sheraton on the Park in Sydney.
2 out of the 5 nights were off peak at the time of booking and of course the system used the off peak night as the free night.
2 weeks ago I saw the whole duration now was standard, still had availability for all 5 nights but they are all now standard pricing.
My advice is, always secured the booking with pts when it is standard / off peak. Then check back frequently to see if the standard changed to peak. Likewise if you must book peak priced nights, check back often to see if there is a change to standard or even off peak.
This frequent rechecking also applies to revenue nights that prices can go down, sometimes drastically. A very important reason we always book fully refundable. Very often we can reprice. Equally often that the prices go up as getting closer to arrival. Rarely but still happens, the price goes down and we could replace the reservation with a nonrefundable at good price when the arrival is very certain. The last scenario is very rare though.
I’m positive that some change occurs on or maybe a couple days before Dec 20th, at least for the hotel whose point rates I frequently check. Not sure if this applies to that single hotel, or that region, or systematically to all hotels though. At least “sometime mid month” is plausible.