Frequent Miler on the Air - Almost BonvAAyed & making lemonade from Marriott’s September lemons

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

Fixing an AAward disaster, what to do now to prep for the Marriott changes, stacking sweet spots and more.

Hi, welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. I'm Greg, the founder of Frequent Miler, and I'm here with Nick Reyes, who's my right-hand man on the blog. And Nick, it looks like you are traveling. That doesn't look like your home office behind you. It is not my home office behind me, nor my home lighting situation either. So I apologize for the slightly dim yellowish light today. But yeah, I know I'm at a Marriott property. I'm actually in exotic Albany, New York this evening. Yeah, yeah. So I had to make a trip to a Simon Mall today to make one more run before the $1,000 cards potentially go away. They're scheduled to end on August 31st. And then my wife had something in the morning. So it made more sense to stop

here. So here I am in Albany, New York. And just for anyone out there who's a This Is Us fan, August 31st is their birthday birthday is the triplets birthday. I haven't seen this as us. I like, I've heard about it. I haven't, I have no idea what it's a great show. It's a great show.

It's on Hulu. I think anyway. Yeah. So that's obviously why Simon and Walt pick that day to sort of celebrate. Of course, that's why they extended it till August 31st, obviously to celebrate their birthday. So anyway, so tell us a little bit about your trip that you're about to go somewhere.

Yes, I am about to go somewhere. Yeah, I'm fairly excited about it. I wrote last year about the opportunity to book many of Marriott's top tier properties. In fact, we at Frequent Miler, Greg and I, wrote quite a bit about that right from the announcement in April of the new program that top tier properties would be available for 60,000 points for a limited amount of time. And it turned out to be true. And a fifth night free dropped that down to 48,000 points per night. So when I found availability, I hopped on the chance to book the St. Regis Bora Bora. So I'm very excited to be going to Tahiti pretty soon. I also was able to connect that with a few nights at the Conrad Bora Bora, which I've read reviews of both properties. I'm really excited to

check out both of them in one trip because I can't imagine that I'll get back to Tahiti and Bora Bora anytime real soon. It's not the easiest place in the world to get to. So I did a little bit out of the way, isn't it? A little bit out of the way. And it's even harder if the airline accidentally cancels your ticket. What? As I found out, it's like there's a story there. That's a little bit of a story. Yeah. So I booked an award ticket through American Airlines to fly on Hawaiian Airlines because, as we've written about quite a bit lately, it's very easy to position to Hawaii. Although, when I originally booked this, I booked it almost a year ago, and I did it this way because I knew we'd be traveling with a young child. Our son's 19 months old now. So I figured if we could position to Hawaii first, spend a couple of days in Hawaii,

then fly from Hawaii to Tahiti, that helps to break up the trip a little bit. So I had booked a flight on American Airlines Advantage miles to fly on Hawaiian Airlines. And again, I booked it like 11 months ago. And just the other day, I called in to add my son as a lap infant, which sure, I dragged my feet a little bit on that to say the least. But I knew that it would be 10% of the cash fare. And I periodically been checking out the cash fares to see if there'd been any change and there hadn't. So I didn't think there was any big deal with waiting until the last minute to add him as a lap infant. And it probably shouldn't have been except that when the agent tried to add him as a lap infant, she somehow accidentally canceled my ticket altogether. And so of course,

how did you find that out? You know, so the agent sounded like she was having a lot of trouble. I heard a lot of, Oh, yeah. And I said, that doesn't sound good. And she said, I have to put you on hold. She didn't even like pick up on the joke. And I thought that doesn't sound great, but she put me on hold for about 15 minutes without checking back in with me. When she finally came back on, I had to go. So I didn't have time to book it over the phone. I just asked her if it was possible. And she said, well, yes, it's possible, but it'll take a while. You'll have to hang on a little bit. And I said, well, I can't, I'll just call back. So I hung up. And when I was ready to call back, I figured, let me check the itinerary and just see if she added him. So I knew what had been

done already. And when I checked the itinerary, I saw that I was no longer in business class. It said economy class. But when I tried to pull it up on the Hawaiian Airlines website, it said there was a problem with the ticket altogether. And it also showed that it was the class of the ticket was the business class, but it said that I was in the economy cabin. So that didn't make any sense to me. So I had to call American Airlines and try to explain the short version of that story to an agent so they could take a look at it. Meanwhile, actually, I will say I had the ability to match to American Airlines gold status from Hyatt Explorer status. That's a promo that they came out with a few months ago that I think it lasts until September 30th. And gold is their lowest tier, right?

Unlike every other chain in the world where gold is the second tier with American, it's lowest. Right. But it's something. Well, I hope that maybe if I did that before I called back, at least I'd get to an agent a little faster. Because if you've ever called American Airlines, then you might still be on hold right now waiting and listening to this while you wait. So I did get through to an agent pretty quickly. Thanks to my gold status, they mentioned that. But anyway, the agent put me on hold for about 25 minutes again without coming back. And when she finally came back, she said she had bad news that the first agent had somehow canceled it and there was no way to fix it right away.

So the only thing they could do was wait three days is what she had told me initially. And when we got further into the conversation, she explained to me that there's a liaison desk. American Airlines has a liaison desk that works with their partners. And so if something like this happens, the liaison desk can contact Hawaiian Airlines revenue management and see if they'll be willing to give the seats back. Because of course, at this point, there's no award inventory. My seats didn't go immediately back into award inventory. So there was nothing American could really do. But ask Hawaiian, could you please give these seats back? And the liaison desk is apparently the group of people that do that. I was a little skeptical, but I was told that they weren't working at the hour that I

was calling. So I'd have to call back the next day. And I did. And I was told again that it would take a few days. And I said, I can't wait a few days because travel is next week. And so luckily I was speaking to a supervisor who was willing to listen anyway and hear me out and understand that I have all these non-refundable bookings on my hands here. So it's not like something easy to cancel and reschedule.

As you know, these days, Marriott, if you don't show up, if you no-show an award reservation, non-refundable bookings on my hands here. So it's not like something easy to cancel and reschedule. As you know, these days, Marriott, if you don't show up, if you no show an award reservation, they can charge you the rack rate. So I'd be out of control, like 1500 bucks a night at the St. Regis. So like, I can't be late. That would be the worst deal of all time. It would totally have been the worst redemption I've ever made. So anyway, eventually she told me that they would have to email Hawaiian Airlines and we just have to wait until Hawaiian Airlines emailed back. I remained firm with her and she eventually walked all the way over to the liaison desk and actually watched them email Hawaiian Airlines and told me that that was all they could do. So I had to wait. But luckily, sure enough, a few hours later, I did get a call from the liaison desk.

Wow. They called you. They called me, which shocked me. That is unheard of in the customer service industry. I couldn't believe it. You know, she told me to call back the next day at an hour that was later than what I was told the liaison desk works until. So who knows what was. Yeah, it didn't really make a lot of sense. But at any rate, I was totally shocked when like just a couple of hours

later, the phone rang and I usually have my sound off. So I just happened to luckily see it said American. And so I picked it up and sure enough, it was a nice gentleman from the liaison desk who explained to me that this never should have happened. There's no way that adding a lap infant should have caused the agent to cancel the ticket. Meanwhile, I guess I left out a key part of the story. American took the liberty to rebook me an economy class. And so they redeposited all of my miles and then took out the number of miles for economy class and booked me an economy class ticket, which I guess was their effort to make sure I still get there on time. But I could have booked that for fewer Virgin Atlantic miles. So that was less important

to me. But at any rate, they sure enough took care of it, got it fixed. Liaison desk explained that this is just the way it works. They have to email the other airline and wait to hear back, but usually they have decent communication between the two and he apologized and was able to reinstate it. So it worked out for the best. It worked out fine. Everything's all set again. So, so when he called you, it was already reinstated? He called me, actually. It wasn't reinstated yet. He called me to make sure that, because at that point, they had reinstated all of my

miles and then taken out the miles for economy class, which was $37,500 instead of the $65,000 for business. So he called me to make sure that it was okay with me, that they redeposit the economy award and then recharge the $65,000 passenger for business class. And I said, yes, of course it's okay. And so is it all set now? It is all set. Yeah. So did it take the three days from that? No, it didn't. It took one day and some persistence is really what it was. I had to call back. And

in fact, so day one, they canceled my ticket by mistake and told me that it would take three days to reinstate. And I said that wasn't going to work. And so they told me I could try and call back on day two and try to speak to somebody. They were submitting the request for me and I was going to have to wait three days. And that's what they told me on day one. On day two, when I got a hold of the supervisor, they told me that nobody had submitted the request yet. So if I hadn't called back on day two, if I'd waited the three days, nobody even would have submitted their request to Hawaiian Airlines yet. So that is

in stark contrast to the customer service I've been receiving from Turkish when I call. I can't always book the awards I want with Turkish, but my goodness, are they much better at communication. Oh, is that right? Wow. They are. It's very tedious booking a Turkish United award. If you don't know what I'm talking Oh, is that right? Wow. That's an incredible redemption value. You can book them over the phone. It is somewhat of a tedious process because they spell out every passenger's name by the phonetic alphabet. They double check every date and every airport code is phonetic. And it's a very slow process. But I'll tell you what, everything is very exact.

The agents are very friendly. I didn't get a lot of sympathy from American Airlines about my canceled ticket. And the thing is, for me, anyway, on this, there's only eight airlines that fly to Tahiti, and only four of those fly from the United States and Hawaiian only flies once a week out of those four. So there's just not very many ways to get to Tahiti. So I was really panicking that if that didn't come through, it's not quite as easy to drop back 10 yards and punt as i may have hoped yeah yeah well anyway i'm so glad that worked out for you and so the lesson i mean the takeaway i think for

listeners is is that there's first of all that there's such a thing as a liaison desk and right i've i've read before that that's something that i guess I don't know if all airlines have that, but that's a common feature of an award program is that they have people whose job it is to liaise between their program and the actual carrier that they're booking the awards on, I think is what they do. And it was frustrating to me that they couldn't call, that that liaison desk doesn't have a phone number to call Hawaiian Airlines, but people were pretty adamant that that's not how it works. They don't have a number for revenue management. And even the gentleman who called me back, I talked to him about that. And he said, no, it's just email contact is what they have. So it's a matter of waiting for somebody to read the email. But I was happy because at that point, there was no award availability. And basically, American Airlines

was able to ask Hawaiian Airlines to open award availability. Right. So that's something good to know for the future. Absolutely. That's a great lesson because usually what happens when an airline messes up your award, even if the original award was on a different carrier, they'll offer to open up space on their own flights. Right.

But that wasn't that option here because American doesn't fly there. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And that was explained to me a number of times that if it was a destination that American went to, it'd be no problem to find a way to open up some space on an American flight. But of course, like you said, American doesn't fly there. So I was about to be out of luck, I thought, and really struggling to try to find a replacement

flight because everything was either way too early or way too late as far as the number of days I would end up getting there, the arrival time. So it was a little frustrating, a little stressful for a couple of days, but we got it all done. Yeah, no, it sounds awful. And I mean, the process sounds awful. I'm so glad it worked out. And it's a great takeaway. When you're talking about the customer service or lack thereof, it reminds me so much of the early days of the Marriott SVG merger and trying to call to get anything done. There were constantly stories like that where people would tell people, yes, I'll take care of it and then nothing would happen at all um and uh you'd have to get lucky uh with them to

get something done now i think things have gotten a lot better they have as far as that goes um but we just got some news yesterday from mariette and they emailed everybody they mailed us all this morning saying there are many new ways to use your points. And if you dig into the details, the many new ways, it's actually you can use many more points for the same old ways. Right? I mean, there's no new way. Many ways to use more points. Right.

And a few ways to use less. Right. Right? So just to recap, what has changed? The big news is that peak and off peak pricing for Marriott award stays is now a thing. It starts September 14th. So if you book now, book an award now, even for a later stay, you can lock in standard award prices. That's a regular standard award chart. Starting the 14th, if you go to book, you might find that some of the nights you want to book are priced at the peak award rate. Some might be at standard, some might be at off-peak, which

is cheaper. So obviously peak is the highest award price. across the award chart in most cases peak and off peak vary from standard by 14 to 20 percent the big anomaly is category one varies by like about 33 percent right so that's a big jump although because category one was already such a a cheap award at at 7500 um mile points um and it goes up to 10 000 at peak or down to 5 000 at uh off peak it doesn't sound like a big change but it is like calculates at 33.3% repeating. So that's a big deal that we've known about from the beginning. They announced this. They had the award chart from the beginning. They didn't spring it on us today. No. But they told us it was

coming in early 2019. So should we consider it a win that it didn't come until late 2019? Maybe. I mean, in a way, although, you know, I kind of feel a little tricked in that,

like, you know, I, I was lulled into thinking, Oh, they changed their mind. Right. Yeah.

It hasn't happened yet. So, you know, maybe it's not going to happen, but instead it looks like what they were doing is getting all their ducks in a row and let me explain why i'm thinking that is three other things changed and i can attribute them all to the peak off peak pricing being added so let me run through them So they changed the award chart for cash and points stays.

Now cash and points is where sometimes you can book a hotel for fewer points as long as you add a copay. And there's an award chart that says what that would be. But I'll stress the sometimes in that. Right. Do you see that very often? I hardly ever see it. Usually.

Yeah, it's a really rare bird to see it at all. So it's not really big news that they changed it. And they only changed the peak and off-peak pricing. The standard pricing is exactly the same as they originally announced. So I think what happened was when they went to finalize the peak and off-peak pricing, they took another look at this award chart. For whatever reason, they didn't like how they had originally set it up. They changed it a bit. When I looked at it, it looks like it's a bit in our favor compared to the award chart they had before for cash and points. But,

um, really it's such a, it's such a rare thing that I don't really care. Um, you know, like if you see it, it might be a good value. You can read my post about it.

right. But, uh, it's, it's not going to be a, a killer value except in the rarest of situations. Yeah. I mean, I've seen a couple. I booked one earlier this year. And actually, now that you mentioned it, I'm kind of kicking myself because the one that I booked earlier this year is the hotel I'm staying at right now. And I didn't even check today. I just looked at

the cash rates and I said, ah, that's low enough. And I have a promo I can trigger with this. So I figured I'll just use a Marriott gift card that I got courtesy of Capital One, which is another story another day. But anyway, so I didn't even check tonight, but the last time I booked here, it actually was a pretty good value on cash and points. But I like to think that I look at awards days more often than most folks, because I'm constantly looking at new trips and looking at what's available and where you can use certificates and things like that for ideas to write about. And I rarely ever see cash and points offered. I mean, a few times,

a handful. So like you said, I don't think it's going to really come into play, although maybe we'll be wrong. Maybe it'll suddenly be really really prevalent i would like to be able to see it more often i mean i don't really understand why they don't offer it all the time the way everybody else does yeah i don't get it either i mean it either makes sense to offer it doesn't i i don't see why but anyway that's yeah that's what they do um now hyatt does the same thing right i guess often available like right far often, but they also don't always offer it. That's true. Yeah, I don't understand it. Anyway, so that was the second change, and that was directly tied to peak and off-peak pricing.

Third change, they changed how points advance works. Now, points advance is a very interesting thing in that it's actually interesting that it's interesting. Let me explain what I mean by that. With Marriott is the only major chain. I mean, it's the only chain I know of, but certainly the only major chain that lets you book award stays without having the points that you need for that stay. And so that's interesting because they're the only ones that do it. But it's strange that it's interesting or strange that it's unique because cash rates work that way at all hotels in the world when you're not booking a prepaid rate. Right. Like it's always this way that you, like if you have $0 in your pocket, you could book a hotel. I mean, you have to have a credit card, but

you could book a hotel and hopefully you have the money to pay for it by the time you get there. Right. That's exactly the risk that they're always taking. Right. Right. Now, presumably, for some reason, when award rates are lower than expected, maybe people book up all of those award stays. And even if they don't intend to use them, like they're going to use some of them, but not all of them. So someone might book the whole summer or something because they see it available and then later decide oh i'm only gonna stay this weekend or whatever um so that would be a good

reason to remove i mean or limit the feature right um which they've done in some small ways um uh but it would sell anyway so i i find it kind of interesting that it's interesting, but it is interesting, and it's a very, very useful feature, and I wish other hotels would mimic it, but they've changed it now, so before, when you booked a points advance, that means you booked a hotel and sort of promising to pay the points later, a few weeks before your stay. What would happen is if the word price changed in the interim, you could still get the rate that was in effect at the time you booked it. So now it wasn't easy you had to call and hopefully find someone who knew how to do that which that was a whole challenge in itself but but it was possible to do to lock in today's prices for a future stay when the price might go up right right and and so now you can still do that, but only until September 14th. Starting

September 14th, if you book a points advance, they now call it booking the room, not the price or something like that. So the idea is you're locking in the award reservation, but not the price of the award. So if the award price changes, you'll have to pay the new price when you finally apply your points. So the reason I believe this is directly coming from the peak and off-peak pricing is that they were going to have a lot of trouble on their hands because it used to be award pricing didn't change very regularly. It would happen every March to a lot of properties. But other than that, it was pretty rare for any properties to change. Now, it's going to happen monthly. They say they're going to recalculate. Well, so far, they've said monthly they're going to recalculate which hotels and date combinations are peak and off-peak.

And so it's going to happen all the time. And, you know, so there's two things, two reasons that might be behind changing the way this works. One is purely practical. Like they had no way of handling it except through the phone before they don't want a million people calling and trying to get the price they booked. Well, I'm trying to keep track of who's booked what and which rates were

available and which one, you know, when it was off peak and when it was peak and all my, yeah, exactly. It's too bad computers can't do this. Right. Right. It'd be so easy if I could just digitally be in there somewhere right yeah i mean like oh wait i guess they do that all the time for cash

cash rates somehow they manage things in fact every again every hotel in the world anyway um with marietta somebody with a binder in the back writing it down. It seems like you have to find that person on the phone. Yeah. And anyway, so they're avoiding that pain rather than just fixing the computers. But there was also ways of gaming it before that now they're stopping that. And I think it would have been more often gameable because of the frequent price fluctuations. So I understand what they're doing. I really wish they would just enhance their computer systems so they would work correctly and it would work the way you expect it to work. But still, other hotels don't have the feature at all, so it's still better

than the others. And the ability to lock in a high demand period when there's award availability really still is a pretty good thing. If you are stuck traveling with the school schedules, you have kids in school and you can only travel when they have school breaks, being able to lock in the availability of a room on points, even if it's going to be at peak pricing later on, might be more valuable to you than locking in the price, knowing that you can have that award later on once you've earned the points, you know, perhaps you just signed up for a new credit card bonus, you just applied for a new card and get a new welcome offer coming, but you want to lock in spring break right now, you can do that. And so I think that that's really a valuable feature. It's a very good feature. So even though it's changing a little bit, I still think that that adds a ton of value. Now, I think when we wrote about this a little while back, some people said that we were encouraging people to game the system and harm Marriott by making these speculative bookings.

And my reaction to that was exactly what you already said, Greg, and that this is exactly what happens with cash all the time. Marriott has figured out that this is something that they're willing to accept, just like they're willing to accept cash reservations that are equally flexible. In fact, the points reservation is a little bit less flexible because I think you have to have the points like two weeks in advance or something like that. They take them out of your account, even if the cancellation policy is only a couple of days in advance. They take the points out a couple of weeks in advance, which is more than they do if you book on cash. They don't run your card until the day of. Right, right. It doesn't run your card until the day of. Right, right. So it doesn't hurt the hotel chain to do this.

Like you said, I wish others would do it because I don't really see a lot of downside. They're earmarking the number of rooms that they have available for award bookings as it is. So why not allow people to lock them in? And they did one more thing to it. They limited it now. So starting September 14th, you'll only be able to have up to three of these points advance bookings at any one time. Marriott members have never done a single actually probably any but you know even those who have done done them probably rarely have more than one um sitting out there at any given time you're different I have a few more than three or four or five I did book a few because I there were a I knew I would have free night certificates coming up that I don't have yet,

but I know that those free night certificates will come along from credit cards. And B, there were some things that I just didn't know my schedule yet. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it or not. So I have a few, and I'm kind of curious what's going to happen come September 14th because I did lock in more than the maximum amount. And I wonder what's going to happen with all of my reservations. All of my, I think it sounds like it's more than it really is,

but it's definitely more than the, the three or five or whatever it was that they told us we could have. So, so yeah, what's going to happen to my reservations? Are they going to cancel all of them? Are they going to, yeah,

they told us we could have up to five before September 14th and then after up to three after. So presumably at least five of them will be safe. My bet is nothing will happen, but I'm sure there's plenty of listeners that are thinking you are so Bonvoyed. I mean, the one thing that makes me a little nervous is that a few of them are at a property that'll be quite expensive. Well, I'll just put it out there. I've always wanted to go to Sundance Film Festival, and I probably won't be able to this year. But I did book there in Park City for the time period during Sundance.

And so the cancellation policy on that hotel during Sundance is like, I don't know, 90 days in advance or something like that. And just like all the other places these days, they'll charge you the full rack rate if you cancel a underneath that cancellation deadline or then be if you end up being late or late for your stay. You miss the first night. You end up having to pay the cash rate and the cash rates are astronomical. So I'm hoping to make a decision before September 14th, just because I don't want to risk that somehow they say, okay, this is a cash rate now. And now you have to pay for it or something. It's an advanced purchase rate or something.

I don't want to take the chance that I get bond void on that one. Too expensive a mistake to make. So I'll probably make some adjustments to some of my future bookings that were points advanced. But, um, but yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's a really interesting feature that I'm glad to see Marriott continuing. And even if it's getting a little limited, like you said, I don't feel like that's super limiting. Right. No, I agree. I'm glad it's, I'm glad it's in place. And if these changes make them keep it forever, then in a way it's a win. I mean, you brought up hotels that charge a cancellation fee within a certain number of days. I do want to mention a trick that sometimes works. I mean, I haven't tried it with the Marriott chain, but it's worked with others where if you're inside the cancellation period or no cancellation period, they might still let you change the date of your stay.

And so try calling the hotel or, you know, and see if you can just push it out to six months later. 93 days. Change it to six months later, whatever, you know, sometime far in the future. And then wait a couple of days and just cancel it. I have had that work for me also. Yeah. Not even intentionally. Actually, it happened to me accidentally just recently with it.

Yeah, I didn't. I didn't intend to cancel it. But I did know that I was within the cancellation period where I couldn't cancel it and I needed to change the date. So I changed it. And then I later decided to cancel it ahead of time for the new cancellation date. So even though I had passed the cancellation deadline on the original reservation, they let me change the date. No problem. When I called the hotel and then I later on canceled it and got all the points back. So that wasn't a Marriott property either, but I did kind of accidentally bump into that recently.

So that is a trick to keep up the sleeve just in case yes yep um and okay and then we were talking about the marriott changes one more the last one was um they changed the name and the workings of fifth night free awards they're not called that anymore right um you still get to book five nights for the price of four. But now they discount it by the cheapest night of the five nights. And so cheap area. So they didn't have to worry about this before, because before everything was price standard, every night was the same price.

Now they can save themselves a little bit of money. There were sometimes seasonal rates or something. I'm trying to remember what they call them. But in very unusual circumstances, there were slight differences. And they would just take off the last night. So now what they're doing is there's going to be a mix of peak off peak standard they're gonna they're gonna if you have an off peak in there that's the one coming off if if you have if you have four peaks and one standard it's the standard that'll be coming off so so you're not going to be saving as much if it's a mixed um mixed thing but in many cases all five nights will be the same price right right i think

so well we don't know actually i guess you know what we might see a lot of we might see a lot of weekends being peak um or vice versa depending on where where are you looking at yeah so so it may come into play then in those cases where it won't actually save you not quite as much anymore but i think there'll be probably situations where it'll be more or less the same as before. I think it's a little cheap and cheesy that they don't just take off the average nightly cost. But I guess it's better to see that feature

stay in some form than be lost altogether. I'm not trying to apologize for them, but I guess if that's the worst of the changes, I don't think that it's probably a major devaluation, is it? What do you think? Yeah, I call it a minor deval. How does Hilton do it? You've looked into Hilton's award pricing a bit, and you've written about how sort of bad their math is. But do you know how they do that? You know, I did. And to be honest with you, I'd have to look back at the post and read it again actually a reader

had pointed out how the math was working on how they figured the fifth night free and to be honest with you I'd have to go back and look at it again and see because yeah it's not it's not a way that I would have thought to have figured out what the fifth night free was I remember I had written about it Hilton stinks at math

was in the title of the post, but the five night reservations differently. So yeah, you'd have to look at it, but it's not the fifth night and it's not necessarily the average of the five nights. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was a complex kind of a formula. So it's not that straightforward necessarily

with all other brands either. And of course with Hilton, it makes a difference because each night can vary wildly since they don't have an award chart. So that's a place where you definitely will see a big range of prices. And you might book five nights where the prices are totally different on points. So the fifth night free is not the price of the fifth night with Hilton, but some weird average of something or other. Okay. I think you need some sort of calculus

to figure it out. But yeah. And that's why it also pays to check the different days individually and see what the prices are. And if you're staying more than five days to consider which five days you want to be your fifth night free, because that may vary a little bit depending on which five nights you've got. So that may be something you'll have to do with Marriott too. Okay. So, um, so now we've discussed the four big Marriott changes. Um, uh, the, the thing that hurts me the most is the, the introduction of peak pricing and what that does to our stay certificates. So I'm not that worried about the fact that I'm going to have to sometimes pay some more points because truth is what I expect to happen is that when hotels

are priced at peak, they'll also be outrageously expensive cash wise at that time, like likely, right? Likely. And, and so it's like, you'll still probably be getting really good value for your points. Um, so I, I'm not like that upset

about that, but what I don't like is the idea that these credit card free night certificates, um, you know, especially the 35 K ones, uh, it's a major devaluation. it's a major devaluation it's a major devaluation because you won't be able to use them at those 35k what is it category five i think right properties right which there are some really nice ones really nice ones there's very good solid 35k properties that make it really rewarding to use those certificates today. Lock those in with points advanced now. Yeah, right. If you want to go during peak, you won't be able to. So what do you think?

Do you think this whole peak, off-peak thing is a major deval? I'll tell you what. It's a major deval to the credit card certificates. And I doubt very much that the banks will do anything to change those certificates but i would love to see them change the certificates to have a 40k cap but um or whatever i'm sorry i said 40k and then i didn't yeah that that's the peak for that category right so tie them to the category like they used to do right i don't understand why they changed especially if they do because because the travel packages as you wrote about

today are tied to the category. So you could easily just tie those free night certificates to the category as well. I guess this is a way of making them less costly. So I guess perhaps that's something that everybody likes, except for us. So I think it's definitely a major hit to the credit card certificates. But actually, I think that the peak and off peak pricing can be a win for two groups of people. Now, the first group of people, you're going to tell me I'm crazy. And so if Greg proves me wrong on the first group of people, hang with me, because the second group

of people I think can really win on the peak and off peak. All right, I'm intrigued because I don't know anyone who's going to win. So group number one is going to be people who marry it. Group number one is going to be people who can travel during off-peak periods, people who aren't tied to the school break schedule and that sort of thing. Personally, I always preferred traveling during shoulder seasons or off seasons when I was paying for it out of my pocket anyway. I would get better deals on things. Of course, you have a better chance of an upgrade if you're traveling when other people aren't traveling because the hotels usually aren't full. Now, of course, that also means hotel rates are sometimes less during those periods, but not always.

And so if you're flexible enough to travel during especially those shoulder seasons when I think maybe we'll see the off-peak pricing, you can potentially save yourself a decent bundle of points. Like I said, the argument against it that Craig will no doubt make is that the cash rates of those hotels will probably correspondingly drop during those off-peak seasons. But I think it's an interesting time to travel. I mean, I went to Ireland in January and there was nobody around. Half the bed and breakfasts were closed and the restaurants too. But it was a fun kind of time. We got a more authentic experience. I felt like I met a lot more local people and that sort of thing so if

you enjoy doing that kind of thing then i think the off-peak pricing might be kind of interesting because you could really save a bundle of points over a longer stay over a four or five six night stay you could save a pretty significant chunk of points uh i'm not even gonna let greg retort that because i'm gonna get to group number two. Cause you know that, that, that is exactly what my rebuttal was going to be. That, you know,

you don't want to use points. Yes. You're saving points to, to get that $30 per night hotel for free. But you know, who wants to pay for it? So award availability for flights is easier during off peak period. So you you know, who wants to pay for it? So award availability for flights is easier during off-peak period. So you're much, you've got a much better chance of not having to, you know, stock for award

availability to find your flights. I mean, you might really discover something interesting that way. But you could pay with points with your Capital One card and probably pay far fewer Capital One points than Marriott points, right? Perhaps I could. Perhaps I could. All right. So group number two, let me move right on. All right. far fewer capital one points than marriott points right perhaps i could perhaps i could but all right so group number two let me let me move right all right group number one they're listening and they're like oh yeah i get it group number two though the people that don't yet see the the opportunity here so stick with me here so category one under the new chart off peak is going to be

5 000 points a night now the fifth night is. So if you can find yourself a five night category one off peak, which won't be easy for everyone, but in a lot of suburban areas, I bet you can find one if you're willing to travel at least a little bit. So 5,000 points a night. So fifth night's free. So five nights will cost you 20,000 total points for a five night stay, right? Right. Now Simon Malls is ending these thousand dollar gift cards supposedly August 31st I sure hope they come back or they extend it or something but maybe it will end I hope to see it again let's say we saw it again in the future manufacturing 20,000 Marriott points you only need to do ten thousand dollars spend on a number of the different chase cards anyway that you can use at Simon malls, they're two points per dollar everywhere, right?

So $10,000 in those cards will get you the 20,000 points. Your cost on that at $4 a card, that's $40 in activation fees. Now your money order fees will cost you probably around 12 bucks more. So $52 is the cost to manufacture a five night category Wednesday, a little over $10 a night.

Therefore manufacturing titanium status would cost little over $10 a night. Therefore, manufacturing titanium status would cost you about $750 a year if you didn't spend a single night in a Marriott hotel. You just manufactured these five-night stays. I mean, of course, I guess you'd have to check in for your five-night stays. So maybe you would spend some nights, but I'm saying no other nights that you plan throughout the course of the year, $750. I think it's going to make it super easy to manufacture a Marriott status. If you only stay 20 or 30 nights a year, it's going to cost you a couple hundred bucks to manufacture the rest of the nights to have platinum status and get yourself free breakfast and hopefully a little upgrade and that sort of thing. So I think it makes it really cheap to manufacture Marriott status. It makes it the cheapest top tier status to

manufacture, in my opinion. That's really interesting. I wonder if now that you've said that they're going to make sure that there's no five nights in a row that are all off at category one. Anyway, I mean, 52 bucks to manufacture five nights. And I say, how much cash back are you for going if you had used your two and a half percent cash back card? That's a great question. So $10,000 spend two and a half percent cash back. So you could have potentially earned what that would be $250, right? So, so it's a, every, every time you manufacture those five nights, the opportunity costs to be 250 bucks. So there's certainly some opportunity costs to doing that. And so I'm not really suggesting that you do that for 75 nights a year. But if you

need 10 or 15 or 20 nights, I don't know. What do you think? Do you think I'm crazy? Do you think that? I don't think you're crazy. I'm just thinking that at $250, you might be able to- You think you could buy a five-night category one? It'd be close. Within the United States? It'd be close. So I mean, you'd have to have... Close? Where are you going to get it for $50 a night with tax included?

I mean, if you're finding $50 a night Marriott's within the United States, you need to let me know after we get off the video packets here. Because that's probably like Bali or Tijuana or something. I mean, I've seen and I've used like $60 rates.

With tax included? In Ann Arbor. And Ann Arbor's not a cheap town. Yeah. So I'm thinking if you go out a little bit. Now, that's like when you're using special codes. So, you know, you may or may not have those codes available. But, yeah, I mean, it could happen.

So I would rather do that because then you earn the points too. Earn the points on top of it. Yeah, that's true. And if there's any promos going on, a lot of promos require it be on paid stays and so you could be earning more that way. But you know what? One thing that's occurred to me is both Chase and Amex have been pretty

generous, I don't know if generous is the right word, both Chase and Amex have been pretty generous. I don't know if generous is the right word, but anyway, they've had a lot of spend bonuses for the Marriott cards. That's true. So we're often earning a total of three points per dollar,

not two. And then that changes the math significantly. Right. Because you're talking less than $7,000 worth of spend to manufacture that 20,000 points for a five night category Category 1 stay. Right, and then you blow it out of the water of being able to have a cash comparison at all, I think. Yeah, and I see opportunity in that because there is a Category 1 that is in an area that I try here in Albany.

There's a Category 1, at least in one of the suburbs here in Albany. And that's not the only one that I ever pass by, but it would make it fairly easy. I would bet that during the wintertime in Albany, New York, I'd probably be able to pick up a five-night off-peak stay every now and then. I see some opportunity anyway to manufacture

the nights to maintain status for not a lot of money. I didn't intend to probably stay enough nights to maintain status into the future. This year, I expect to make titanium. But after that, I didn't assume that I necessarily would. But if this off-peak thing works out, I think I might. And then, you know, when you expand that and you look at off-peak pricing for some of the other top tier properties, if you like to stay in really nice hotels and you don't mind what time of year you're going to stay there, then I think that there's, again, some good MS opportunity in terms of how much it'll cost you to manufacture the points for off-peak stays.

It's not going to be a huge savings, don't get me wrong, but a nice little savings anyway on some of the higher-end properties. So the difference isn't quite as big on those as it is in Category 1, but that's the one that stuck out to me. Yeah, no, all right. That's fair. That's pretty interesting. So that's another way for those who are status hunting to potentially earn the status or earn the extra nights they need if they're close, whatever. Now we have that list of shortcuts to elite status. I mean, booking award nights and five night, fifth night free awards is on that list, I think,

if I remember right. But when it was written, we didn't have off peak as an option. Right. Now the thousand dollar Simon cards for that matter. Now it is possible to book theoretically anyway,

Marriott hotels for less than 5,000 points per night. For less than 5,000 points per night for less than 5,000 points per night tell us how so you have to have the combination of a point saver rate and an off peak I don't know if that would ever happen but they have the award chart showing it I don't remember off the top of my head what the pricing is in that combination but you know it might be 4,000 points per night, for example. So if you're lucky enough for the category one near you to ever be on Point Saver and Off Beaks, that's pretty great.

And I'm using the Simon cards, by the way, as a point of comparison for how to manufacture the points, but that's not necessarily the cheapest form of MS out there. There are certainly cheaper ways. There are times when there are promos and there are cards with no fee at all. We see quite often. So there are even cheaper ways to do it. But I look at that and I say, well, you know, a lot of people look at the ability to book a meeting for 10 nights,

10 elite nights, and I don't know what everyone's paying for their meetings, but I would bet that it's more than double the cost to manufacture the points for a five-night stay, right? I would bet that it's more than the cost to manufacture points for two five-night stays. Of course, it's easier and quicker probably, but I think, again, this is, I think, a viable shortcut to status. Yeah. Well, meetings, by the way, are limited now to one a year. So one time a year, you could get 10 elite nights. And number of people I know who've done it, I haven't done it yet, because I just because I haven't needed to, but usually get a meeting room for about an hour for about 70 bucks, i've heard a lot more in the hundred areas so that was the number i was working off in my mind yeah yeah and so so it's possible then i guess to to work out cheaper that way it depends on what your ms costs are but but it won't get you all the way there if you're if you're but this far from your goal yeah right right so i think i think there's a possible win there now of course obviously i don't want to pay more points for my

hotel stays any more than anybody who's listening to this. So I'm not particularly excited about the peak pricing at all. And I think that there are some properties that I'm betting are just going to be peak basically year round. I mean, what do you think about that? Do you think that places that are in high demand are just going to be peak all the time? Is Marriott promising to have some off peak timesak times what are we looking at when it comes to the places we really want to stay at yeah I mean so they say they're going to do it based on um the the demand for the hotel right so if if that's true then probably what we'll see is maybe if you look at end of schedule as soon as you know so

as soon as like a date 11 months out or whatever appears on the schedule maybe that'll be standard but then hint here I think it the app shows a little bit more a couple days more than the website does that's how I think I didn't know that or anyway at the time the I'll showed a couple days farther than the website did. Okay. So there you go. And there's a reason then to also pay attention to the points advance feature. You might not have the points yet, but if you want to lock in standard, you might have to look 11 months out for those really popular hotels that are in popular places,

like Hawaii is going to be that pops in my mind it's like even though they technically have like high season it's it's pretty popular year-round right um I you know but other places do um have significant seasonality and so I do think we'll see even at popular hotels I think we'll see some off-peak even at those. I hope so. I hope so. Because Marriott, I think, promised that there would be some balance between peak and off-peak, right?

And I'm kind of assuming that that balance is going to lean more towards some hotels being off-peak most of the time and some hotels being peak most of the time. Although I think that that's a benefit again for those category one you know manufactured nights but i i think that the disappointment for me in peak and off peak is one that i saw coming and i knew was coming eventually and that the places that i'd really like to stay are probably going to be more expensive i said i do enjoy traveling during shoulder seasons and that's true but i also enjoy about points and miles the ability to go to events and things where they normally wouldn't like the super bowl this year i was able

to book a room on points when the cash rates were a thousand dollars a night i didn't actually go to the game but i got to be around the stadium and in the atmosphere and i like that kind of thing and marriott's about to make that kind of experience much more expensive. Right, right. All right. Well, I see where we've been on the air for quite a while now. So why don't you do your thing and talk us out of here? Well, first of all, thank you guys all for listening in for watching. It's great to have you all out here. Please feel free to leave comments on the Facebook posts on this. If you have questions and that sort of thing to reach out to us and let us know. You've also got to contact us on frequent miler.

Now, if you're listening to the podcast here, then, uh, you know, make sure you're checking out the, uh, the regular posts and you will see if you're watching this or listening in,

you'll see links to this particular, uh, video in our weekend review posts. That'll be Saturday mornings post. So you'll see that up on the frequent miler site tomorrow morning, Saturday morning, the 17th, that will have the links to all the podcast forms so if you actually are watching in and or if you came in here late then you can catch the full broadcast in on youtube on facebook and on

all of your favorite podcast formats the links again will all be in tomorrow's post so check that out thank you guys very much for being here today we look forward to seeing you next week thank you greg for being here and sharing everything with us about the new Marriott changes. Thank you, Nick. Good night, everyone. Take care. Good night.