Marriott Rewards Advantage is Free Nights Redemption Chart

Marriott Rewards competitive advantage over Hilton HHonors, Hyatt Gold Passport, IHG Priority Club, and Starwood Preferred Guest is their “Free Nights Redemption Chart” which offers a progressively increasing per night discount for multiple night hotel stays using points. The difference with the Marriott Rewards table is the points per night cost decreases for every extra night of a hotel stay using points beginning with 2-night stays.

 Marriott San Francisco 

Savings Example Using Marriott Rewards Points for a Multiple Night Stay:

Marriott Rewards Category 5 Hotels cost 25,000 points for one room night using points. 

2-night stay = 46,000 points.   Per night rate drops to 23,000 points for a free night when you book a two-night stay using points.  Spending 46,000 points for two nights is an 8% discount from 50,000 points.

Important Difference of Marriott Rewards — The other major hotel programs do not discount the per night cost for a two-night stay.

A Crowne Plaza stay at 25,000 points  for one night will cost 50,000 points for two nights using hotel points.

A 5-night stay at a Marriott Rewards Category 5 hotel using points costs 95,000 points.  The cost per night on a 5-night Marriott Rewards Category 5 hotel = 19,000 points per free night.  This is a 24% savings on the per night cost for a five night hotel stay.

The higher category Marriott Rewards hotels, Category 5, 6, and 7 hotels, for longer stays of five to seven nights provide a per night discount over 30% and some reward stays approach a 40% discount when using points.  This is one of the highest discounts in the hotel industry for upscale and luxury high-end hotel properties when using hotel points for free stays.

Starwood Preferred Guest has the 5th Night Free Award Stay which gives a 20% discount on the per night rate, but SPG does not have discounted point rates for stays less than five nights using hotel points.

Marriott Rewards Redemption Chart 

source: http://www.marriott.com/rewards/usepoints/hotelrew.mi  

Marriott Rewards – Points per Night for a Multiple Night Stay 

Color codes show the relative per night discounts for longer stays. 

Percentages shown are per night discounts for an award stay based on per night cost for a 1-night award.  The larger percentages indicate more savings in points when booking a multi-night award using Marriott Rewards hotel points.

Marriott Rewards discounts the per night rate by 30% or more for cat 5, 6, and 7 hotels on 6-night and 7-night award reservations.

Marriott Rewards discounts are 20% to 27% on per night rates for Category 5, 6, and 7 hotels when booking 4-night or 5-night award stays using points.

Other Hotel chains are not as generous as Marriott Rewards for shorter hotel stays using points.

Hilton HHonors requires a minimum 6-night stay before any discount kicks in on the per night redemption rate using points.  VIP-only awards for 6-night or longer hotel stays are available to Hilton HHonors elite members.  Elite membership is a relatively small hurdle to qualify for Silver elite status and access to VIP-Only Reward stays.  Hilton HHonors Silver VIP requires just four Hilton-family hotel stays per year.

HHonors Category 6 hotel is 40,000 points per night.  A 6-night VIP award for a Category 6 hotel is 175,000 points, a 27% points discount.  Marriott’s comparable 6-night, Category 6 award is only 120,000 points and offers a 33% discount on the per night rate.  Hilton allows the member to earn 15 points per $1 hotel spending with Points&Points earning preference.  These awards will take about the same amount of hotel spending to earn the award.

HHonors Category 6 hotel is 40,000 points per night.  A 4-night award for a HHonors Category 6 hotel is 160,000 points, no discount on the per night points for a four-night HHonors stay.

Marriott Rewards Category 6 hotel for a four-night stay is 95,000 points.

The Marriott Rewards member is likely to earn a four night stay with less overall spending.  Hilton HHonors Diamond elites will have more equally matched earning power due to HHonors 50% elite bonus for Diamonds compared to only a 30% elite bonus for Marriott Rewards Platinum members.

Update Oct. 4, 2008:  HHonors American Express credit card HHonors 4-night AXON award discount.  An astute reader pointed out the option for Hilton HHonors members with a co-branded American Express HHonors credit card to redeem HHonors points for a 4-night AXON award at HHonors Category 5 or Category 6 hotels for 125,000 points. 

I overlooked the AXON hotel stay option in this analysis.  I have a post from May 15, 2008 about the HHonors American Express AXON awards.  The HHonors American Express card, along with SPG AmEx, also came out on top in earning potential in my analysis of hotel co-branded credit cards in this post “Comparison of Hotel Loyalty Program Affinity Credit Cards“.

Gary Leff wrote about the best bonus points offer he has seen from HHonors American Express on his “View from the Wing” blog in this October 4, 2008 post .

Hyatt Gold Passport

LHW 1928 Promotion Saga – LHW Emails Respond to Promotion Disaster

The power of a social network site was demonstrated with the rapid fire posting of information yesterday on the FlyerTalk LHW 1928 thread (page 51 is when LHW responds to promotion meltdown).  Interspersed between the whines and calls for lawyers were cogent posts from an LHW representative proactively providing information to the FlyerTalk thread readers.  I learned about the rescheduled email promotion from an LHW representative posting on FlyerTalk a couple of hours before I actually received the email to my inbox.

Yesterday I received two emails from LHW regarding the 1928 promotion.

The first email provided a form for resubmitting a request for a reservation with space for up to 3 LHW hotels.  I was asked to submit the form during an 80 minute window beginning at 5am California time on Thursday, October 2, 2008.

The text of the email is shown here:

“Dear Ric Garrido,

We are deeply sorry for today’s disruption of the USD 19.28 sale. Demand for this promotion far surpassed our expectations, and due to the exorbitant amount of traffic to www.lhw.com/1928, we were unable to accommodate travel requests. Nonetheless, we intend on making every effort to honor the offer on a first come, first serve basis, and have devised a plan to enable you to apply for the USD 19.28 rate. (The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd. makes no representation or guarantee that it will be able to fulfill your request.)

Please click here to download the form for details. As a reminder, below is a complete list of the hotels participating in this promotion.

Thank You,

The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd. “

And this is the form:

Approximately four hours later a second email from Ted Teng, Leading Hotels of the World President and CEO, arrived stating the October 2 email promotion is suspended and email registrants for the 1928 promotion will be contacted next week with further details.

Dear Ric Garrido,

Thank you so much for your continued patience with The Leading Hotels of the World. We are extremely sorry for the inconveniences we have caused and regret to advise you that the USD 19.28 email promotion scheduled for tomorrow October 2nd shall be postponed.

Although our original back-up plan provided a viable solution for the 150,000 people who were registered, it was met with some confusion over submission procedures and timing. In addition, we have become increasingly concerned that a large number of non-registered respondents plan to submit forms which would inundate the system and greatly diminish your chances of securing a USD 19.28 rate.

In view of this, please do not email your form tomorrow. You will most likely receive an error message we have put in place as a safety mechanism.

We are sincerely committed to restoring your faith in our brand and do not want to risk disappointing you again. We are working tirelessly to develop a solution that will be fair for you and all registered participants. We will email you next week with further details.

Sincerely,

Ted Teng

President & CEO

The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd.

Unfortunately, what looked to be a great marketing campaign caught fire with the media and the public.  I googled the LHW 1928 promotion yesterday morning to see how my blog post ranked and all I found was page upon page of mainstream media news reports from local papers and TV stations reporting on the promotion for the past three weeks.  I am surprised only 150,000 people registered for the 1928 promotion. 

I had this story marked since September 5 for writing a blog post about the LHW 1928 promotion.  I decided to wait until just two days before the promotion so the idea would be fresh in readers’ minds to be prepared for the 80 minute booking window.

My thoughts on the resolution of the PR disaster is persons who registered for the promotion will likely receive a discount offer for an LHW stay in addition to another opportunity for $19.28 roomnights.  The point of a marketing campaign is to get loyal customers.  Repeat customers are much less costly to direct market hotel advertising than a shotgun blast to the public.

LHW states they have 150,000 of us registered for the 1928 promotion.  That is a good direct marketing base and now all they have to do is come up with a plan to keep us interested in LHW.  I don’t expect all 150,000 of us to receive a $19.28 room night reservation as compensation for our wasted time, although that would be nice. 

I expected to have wasted time in trying to secure a room for a particular date at a specific hotel.  I have played the auction bidding game and know it is a matter of patience and trying to be clever enough to get the right bid.  I’ve spent hours planning flights on a great airfare sale and then have the fare reprice higher before getting my ticket purchase finalized.  I wasted a couple of hours in the past month trying to get low hotel rates through the Sheraton San Diego and Super 8 motel promotions.

What makes the LHW sale different is I just didn’t expect to be locked out of any possibility of getting a room reservation.  And if it weren’t for the transparency facilitated by a social media site like FlyerTalk I, and you, would probably have assumed we were just unlucky and some 6,000 other people beat us to the bargain rooms for $19.28 per night.

FlyerTalk made us aware that it was a system-wide failure on LHW’s part.  When nobody can access the promotion site, trying from countries all over the world, then you know there is something not working with the promotion rather than just your own bad luck.

The registration and posting of information on the FlyerTalk thread from Marshall Calder, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Leading Hotels of the World, showed a sincere attempt to keep the public informed through an active social media channel which also allowed those of us reading FlyerTalk to disseminate information to others not reading FlyerTalk. 

I do expect some attempt will be made to provide a generous discount on an LHW stay or some other promotional offer to try and retain the attention and place a positive spin on the potential customers who generated an overwhelming interest in the LHW 1928 promotion.

I think LHW is now taking the necessary time to really plan an appropriate response.  We may not all get $19.28 rooms, but I predict registered participants will get something in the way of a discount offer from LHW that is not available to the general public.

Some of us will likely still get $19.28 rooms and I imagine the rest of us will get some stay incentive for an LHW hotel member rather than being left empty-handed if we still miss out on the cheap room nights when the promotion is resumed.

I’ll keep you posted as developments occur.