Remember to lock in your Marriott reservations before March 29th

I’m sure you are already aware that Marriott has recently announced its plan to introduce Flexible Point Redemption in details. You could find the FAQs here and I would not bore you with many interpretations as it’s already covered by almost every travel blog.

Here are some basic facts:

• The new policy kicks in on March 29th
• Hotels will no longer have a redemption category, nor will they show standard / peak / off-peak prices
• For stays in 2022, most hotels will keep the existing redemption cap, barring 217 properties whose cap will increase by up to 30,000 points
• For stays in 2023, no cap applies anymore to any hotels
• PointSavers and Fifth Night Free still apply

What I want to reiterate is: lock in your redemption now, even if the property you intend to stay with is not on the adjustment list. There are two reasons behind this:

1. What remains unchanged is the cap, not what an award night actually costs. For example, a Category-1 hotel costs 5,000 / 7,500 / 10,000 points for off-peak / standard / peak dates nowadays, which may be spread evenly throughout the year. After March 29th however, you may see the hotel cost 10,000 points or near for most of dates.
2. Note that there’s no cap for 2023 stays – if you have any potential stays in early 2023, at any property, make some speculative bookings now. On March 29th they could cost an arbitrary amount of points in theory – although to be fair I don’t think they’d be too far off initially at least.

Note that Points Advance bookings won’t lock in you bookings at the current price. You must accrue enough points for your bookings by the deadline.