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Marriott Bonvoy massive unannounced devaluation

These devaluations makes a 35K certificate pretty useless when the max top up i believe is still only 15K..perhaps they should allow unlimited top ups on those certificates or risk losing all the Amex cards holders especially for us Canadians.
Add in the additional negatives like Resort fees and so many places closing Lounges permanently makes me wonder if i'll continue my Loyalty of traveling in Hotels.
 
Docsdrillers said:
These devaluations makes a 35K certificate pretty useless when the max top up i believe is still only 15K..perhaps they should allow unlimited top ups on those certificates or risk losing all the Amex cards holders especially for us Canadians.
Add in the additional negatives like Resort fees and so many places closing Lounges permanently makes me wonder if i'll continue my Loyalty of traveling in Hotels.
Click to expand...
In the US the fee for the cards that get the 35k cert is $100-$150 plus you get some elite nights. Are you saying even with the devaluation you can't find a hotel systemwide that you would want to stay in that isn't worth around $150? Yes, they are worthless if even with adding points you are looking to stay in a $400+ hotel for the most part.
 
jabberwocky said:
This pretty much puts the nail in the coffin for my Bonvoy Brilliant card. The fee was paid in December ‘24 and I’m just waiting on the FNC.

I’ve got an upcoming European stay and was going to use it to add an extra night after a conference. Last week the night would have been just over $800 USD or 83,000 points. I just checked and the nightly rate is still $800 but it is now 90,000 points for the night - so I’ll have to bought up and extra 5k points on top of the cert. Still makes the AF worthwhile for this year.
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Once you have the cert in your account, you can downgrade to the $95 Marriott card and get most of your AF back.
 
CericRushmore said:
Once you have the cert in your account, you can downgrade to the $95 Marriott card and get most of your AF back.
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We also downgraded about a year ago. We now use the FNCs for airport transfers but those are becoming harder to find hotels.

I like the $125 AF business Bonvoy AMEX better because it has some decent AMEX offers and an FNC. The personal Bonvoy that I also own may be next on the chopping block depending on whether we can use the FNCs for our travel.
 
rickandcindy23 said:
Yes, those certificates were a big selling point at Westin Maui last year. The closer guy told me he would show the value of those and said we could buy up to 6 of them. I wasn't interested. I usually have over 400,000 points. So glad we didn't do that.
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Yes, the Westin Lagunamar folks were acting like it was a huge part of the sale to be able to BUY Bonvoy points because I had upgraded my membership. Yes, if you want to go to Fiji or Tahiti or something they can offer a discount over cash, but that isn't in my vacation plans. You buy them and there is less you can do with them each year. You used to be able to get a vacation package that included airfare for what you can get a few nights for now.
 
trippka said:
Yes, the Westin Lagunamar folks were acting like it was a huge part of the sale to be able to BUY Bonvoy points because I had upgraded my membership. Yes, if you want to go to Fiji or Tahiti or something they can offer a discount over cash, but that isn't in my vacation plans. You buy them and there is less you can do with them each year. You used to be able to get a vacation package that included airfare for what you can get a few nights for now.
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I wonder how many folks buy those certificates without actually doing the math to see if they are saving money on their travel?
 
tschwa2 said:
In the US the fee for the cards that get the 35k cert is $100-$150 plus you get some elite nights. Are you saying even with the devaluation you can't find a hotel systemwide that you would want to stay in that isn't worth around $150? Yes, they are worthless if even with adding points you are looking to stay in a $400+ hotel for the most part.
Click to expand...
The thing I don't get is - I would immediately plan to divest myself of something that limited (well, I didn't join back in the day because of that). If I'm looking for a $150 back, I think it just makes sense to get a cash back card and stay wherever. Way more than MVC, I'm really surprised Hilton Honors isn't and hasn't been eating Bonvoy's lunch for like 15 years just on the better FNC. I think - at least for people like me - Bonvoy needs to stop calling these "FNC" and instead call them IDK "bonus bonvoy points".
 
I have 5 separate upcoming points reservations in a variety of locations and hotel brands- and I didn’t notice any increases. One actually had gone down 2000 points so I rebooked and got the refund. So YMMV on this devaluation.
 
jp10558 said:
The thing I don't get is - I would immediately plan to divest myself of something that limited (well, I didn't join back in the day because of that). If I'm looking for a $150 back, I think it just makes sense to get a cash back card and stay wherever. Way more than MVC, I'm really surprised Hilton Honors isn't and hasn't been eating Bonvoy's lunch for like 15 years just on the better FNC. I think - at least for people like me - Bonvoy needs to stop calling these "FNC" and instead call them IDK "bonus bonvoy points".
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Hilton is eating their lunch. We have 3 uncapped FNCs from Hilton that we used at the Waldorf for the past several years. Now with the additional of Small Luxury Hotels there are even more possibilities. We spend money at these resorts. The Bonvoy FNCs are airport transfers and we spend nada. When we want to stay in MVC we use II or Abound.

We put MF and minimal spend on the Bonvoy peso cards these days. Sock drawer but that may go away soon.
 
We'll continue to accumulate and spend Bonvoy points. We usually get three FNCs a year from credit card and Choice Benefit. I am not in the mood to try and have to learn the ins and outs of another hotel program. We will have 85,000 points with Hilton shortly and have about the same with Wyndham Hotels with no real plan on how to use them.

We mainly use points and FNCs to fill in the gaps between timeshare stays when they don't line up perfectly. Perhaps we could squeak out an extra 10% of value by jumping to Hilton Honors, but it really isn't worth our time.
 
I can understand how unhappy folks are since when we were younger we used points for trips to Europe with the included airfare. Now we just use points to stay at airport Fairfields or those when we drive south on I 95 so it has little impact on us.
 
I don't stay in hotels that much except when traveling to Europe and Asia. I recently scored 7 nights at St Regis in Singapore (reported in another thread) for only 196K Bonvoy points and 2 FNA (35K each) from credit cards. I got lucky and it was showing that it was requiring 266K Bonvoy points for the 7 nights when the Marriott hotel which I normally stay at in Singapore wanted 350K Bonvoy points. It was a no brainer to go with St Regis. A couple of weeks after I made the reservation, St Regis in Singapore wanted 350K Bonvoy points. I booked it at the right time.
 
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It's a joke trying to use your Marriott Bonvoy points when your point value don't increase but the point value for rooms has gone up tremendously. They don't give us
more points for converting to Points and Abound points is another chapter.
 
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