The once famous Marriott Hotel and Air Travel Packages are being retired next week. Gary at View from the Wing broke the news that an update to Marriott's terms and conditions was prematurely released with the note these packages would be discontinued as of January 19, 2022. He reached out to Marriott and they have confirmed this change to be true and are apologetic on how it has come to public knowledge this way without letting members know first.
For those familiar with these packages they used to be an amazing redemption option of the Marriott Bonvoy program where you you would redeem points for a 5 to 7 night stay plus a set amount of airline frequent flyer miles. The amount you redeemed would depend on which category of hotel you were looking to stay at but the combination of the stay and miles used to provide huge value. That was nearly four years ago, if you go back to our post from July 2018 we discuss how these packages were devalued that year. That being said there were opportunities over these past four years to extract value out of them when using the packages for hotels that were charging Peak redemption rates.
Wrapping it up
I would assume the retiring of Marriott's Hotel and Air Travel Packages are tied into the upcoming major change to dynamic pricing in the Marriott Bonvoy program. Seeing that there won't be set redemption amounts per category it would be difficult for them to price these packages out properly and consistently so that hey wouldn't have terrible value or the complete opposite amazingly huge value for their members. I would also assume that anyone holding on to one of these packages (or booking one prior to next week) will be bound by the current terms of them.
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