Marriott Flexible Point Redemption is now live, and you may want to rebook some reward nights

If you have searched for any Marriott point bookings today, you may have seen some odd prices like this:

This is because Marriott’s Flexible Point Redemption Rates, a.k.a dynamic reward night pricing has just kicked in.

As a reminder, here’s what happened:

• Marriott hotels no longer have redemption categories
• For reward stays in 2022:
  • Globally 217 hotels have adjusted redemption rates, which means they may require more points than the previous cap imposed by the respective category
  • Other hotels won’t cost more than what its peak pricing used to be
• For reward stays in 2023: there won’t be any caps for redemption rates

For example, a Category 1 hotel used to cost 4,500/7,500/10,000 points on off-peak/standard/peak dates, and now it can cost anywhere between 4,500 and 10,000 points. However, unlike previously when there’s some sort of pre-defined distribution, you may see the most popular hotels constantly cost 10,000 points, whereas the least desired ones hover around 5,000 points throughout the year.

Let’s have a look at London. The Marriott County Hall which I really loved is now priced near the top mark (100K) almost all the time:

Renaissance St Pancras on the hand, still have some 40K dates in April, which is close to the original off-peak pricing (36K).

Marriott’s pricing algorithm is more similar to IHG than Hilton, or in other words the redemption rate is somehow linked to the cash price but there isn’t a fixed formula. This is good news, but obviously things can change in the long run.

From the data points I’ve seen in various forums, the trend is popular hotels are priced towards the top end whereas other hotels have actually become cheaper, which could be a welcome change. Maldives has suffered greatly, but W Koh Samui and Tokyo (e.g. The Prince Gallery hotel) are less expensive now.

My friend who’s developed a tool for monitoring IHG reward prices has come up with some interesting stats:

• Summing up the redemption rates of all Marriott hotels in China, the total has dropped 6.35% on March 30 compared to March 29
• Out of the 30 most-searched hotels, only 6 have increased in average redemption rates

If you currently hold any point bookings, check the rates again as you may save some points by rebooking. And in the new system prices may change regularly for the same hotel / date, so you may need to monitor them closely.