When Marriott released the award categories for Marriott/SPG/Ritz-Carlton properties from August 1st, 2018 yesterday one thing that caught a lot of people’s attention was that top tier properties such as St. Regis Maldives, St Regis Bora Bora, Al Maha would be added to the regular award table. Previously these all suite properties had a special rate reserved for themselves and even when they went on sale for 35% off they were incredibly expensive. For example the St Regis Bora Bora normally costs 90,000 SPG points per night (270,000 Marriott points).
Under the new program these properties are set to be a category 8 properties and will cost 85,000 points per night, as you probably know by now category 8 won’t be introduced until 2019 so these properties will actually only cost 60,000 points per night. Insane value right? A property that previously cost 180,000 Marriott points will now cost a third of the price! The problem with that line of thinking is as follows:
- Marriott has confirmed that points bookings made at these properties will only apply to “standard rooms” and not some of the suites they have previously booked into. For example with the St Regis Bora Bora, most people go there for the overwater bungalows and when you made a booking for 60,000 SPG points that’s exactly what you received. They also have rooms that have beach or pool views that are significantly cheaper when booking with cash compared to the overwater bungalows. Somebody joked that they expect to see these properties come out with single bed closet rooms, but realistically they are definitely going to put you in the worse room available if you’re paying 60,000 points vs $600+ per night.
- Availability is going to suck. There is going to be a lot of people trying to book the exact same properties as you. I suspect places like St. Regis Bora Bora won’t have great availability to begin with, with a few token rooms available and they are going to get snapped up quickly. I know people have already started writing scripts to try and instabook rooms as soon as they go live on August 1st (something I absolutely do not condone and I hope Marriott puts things in place to prevent).
- Do you really want to travel there? A lot of these properties are incredible and maybe this is a once in a lifetime opportunity but personally I try not to choose hotels just because the cash price is exceptionally high. Experiencing an overwater bungalow isn’t something I actually think I’d enjoy and your hotel is only one part of the expense (keep in mind how expensive it is to get to these properties for example or how expensive food is).
I still think some of these properties present great value and some readers will undoubtedly be able to book them at this 60,000 point price. I do think that it’s a good idea to temper your expectations and maybe do some research on how much money you’ll spend out of pocket and if it’s something you’ll enjoy rather than just looking at the cash prices and thinking that you have to book there to just get the best ‘value’ out of your points. What are your thoughts? Will you have multiple browsers open with 100,000’s of points ready to book on August 1st?
