Marriott Launches New Unified Guest Loyalty Program

With great fanfare, Marriott International launched its as-of-yet unnamed new guest loyalty program on August 18.

“Now you can reserve, earn and redeem across 6,500 extraordinary hotels,” Marriott said in a message on its website. “The Ritz-Carlton Rewards, Marriott Rewards, and SPG are now a unified program.”

The hotelier had originally planned merge the programs on August 1. It doesn’t plan to announce the new name of the program until 2019. Until then, the unified program will operate under the three current names.

Marriott’s unified award chart features eight categories of rooms with three tiers of pricing, namely Off-Peak, Points Value, and Peak.

The company began the back-office process of merging member accounts on Saturday, and the websites and apps for the three programs remained offline for the time being, even though Marriott had indicated that the new spg.com website along with the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton mobile apps would be available but subject to service interruptions.

Along with the unified program, Marriott introduced a single points currency. Members of any of the three programs will earn ten points per dollar spent on hotel charges, although that will go down to five points per dollar at Element, Residence Inn, and TownPlace Suite hotels, and 2.5 points per dollar at Marriott Executive Apartments. Members with elite status will continue to earn their respective bonuses.

To compensate for the change, members of Starwood Preferred Guest will see their Starpoints balance multiplied by a factor of three in a one-time conversion.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)