Update: Today is the final day to book hotels before their rates go up.
Originally posted on 2/9/17:
Marriott 2017 Complete List Of Annual Category Changes
Book stays before 3/7 local hotel time to lock in current rates for future stays at hotels that are going up. Almost all hotel stays are cancellable for free until a certain amount of time before the stay (read the fine print). If you have a reservation at a hotel that is going down then just cancel and rebook the stay on 3/7 when this year’s category changes go into effect.
23% of Marriott hotels will changes categories. Of those 60% will become more expensive and 40% will become less expensive.
This list is subject to change and other hotels can still be added to it.
For example if you have a 7 night category 1-5 hotel certificate and want to go to Curaçao, you’ll want to reserve that before 3/7 when the Renaissance moves to a category 6.
View sample hotels changing in category and more on the Marriott/SPG program after the jump:
Marriott has 9 categories of hotels and 5 tiers of Ritz-Carlton hotels.
Sample hotels going more expensive:
-Renaissance Curacao Resort & Casino, was 5, now 6
-Waikoloa Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, Big Island of HI, was 7, now 8
-JW Marriott Macau, was 7, now 8
-JW Marriott Panama Golf & Beach Resort, Panama, was 7, now 8
-JW Marriott Hotel Cusco, Peru, was 7, now 8
-JW Marriott Cancun Resort & Spa, was 8, now 9
-The Ritz-Carlton, Fort Lauderdale, was tier 3, now tier 4
-Edition London, England was tier 3, now tier 4
Sample hotels going less expensive:
-AC Hotel Washington, DC at National Harbor, was 5, now 4
-Renaissance Sao Paulo, Brazil, was 6, now 5
-AC Hotel Chicago Downtown, was 7, now 6
-Kameha Grand Zurich, Switzerland, was 7, now 6
-JW Marriott Hotel Dubai, was 7, now 6
-The Ritz-Carlton, Budapest, was tier 3, now tier 2
-The Ritz-Carlton Bali, Indonesia, was tier 3, now tier 2
Of course you can use Marriott points or Starpoints for Marriott hotels.
-You can receive 3 Rewards points for every Starpoint transferred into Marriott.
-You can receive 1 Starpoint for every 3 Marriott Rewards points transferred to Starwood.
-Transferring any Marriott points to Starwood will keep your Starpoints alive for another 18 months, so it’s worth doing it just for that. Marriott points expire after 24 months and you need to earn or redeem points to keep them alive, transfers don’t extend their expiration. However Starwood counts transfers as activity to keep your points alive. Officially Starwood has a 12 month expiration policy, but they don’t enforce it until 18 months have gone by. Starwood is also generous about reactivating expired miles if you plead your case. In short, you should keep all of your points by Starwood until you need to redeem Marriott points.
-You can buy Starpoints here if you need some extra points to top off your Starwood or Marriott account.
-Marriott has 9 categories of hotels that range from 7,500 to 45,000 points per night or 6,000 to 40,000 points per night when they’re on PointSavers.
-Marriott also has 5 tiers of Ritz Carlton hotels that range from 30,000 to 70,000 points per night or 20,000 to 60,000 points per night when they’re on PointSavers.
–Starwood has 7 categories of hotels that range from 2,000 to 35,000 points per night.
-Both chains also offer capacity controlled Cash+Points options that aren’t displayed in this chart.
-Starwood category 5-7 hotels have low and high season dates that are set annually by each hotel.
Chart 1: View how many Starpoints or Marriott Rewards are needed for Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, and SPG hotels, along with a few sample hotels from each level (from before the current category changes).
The top number is the points required for a 1 night stay. The bottom number is the points required per night if you stay for 5 nights:
Chart 2: View how many Starpoints or Marriott Rewards are needed for a air+hotel package at Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels.
With these packages you will get miles and a 7 night hotel certificate.
The best value is the largest mileage option, though there are smaller mileage options as well.
-For example for 90K Starpoints or 270K Marriott Rewards points you will get a 7 night hotel stay at Marriott category 1-5 properties and 132K miles if you choose to transfer the miles to United.
-You’ll get 120K miles if you choose to transfer the miles to Aeromexico, Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, British Airways, Copa Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, GOL/Varig, Hawaiian Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Southwest, or Virgin Atlantic. Transfers to Southwest made by 3/31 qualify for Companion Pass Status which allows you to bring a friend with you for free on all paid and award travel through the end of the year after you qualify.
-The miles will post regardless of when or if you use the 7 night certificate.
-The 7 night hotel certificate expires in 1 year, though Marriott currently will extend them for 1 additional year if you contact them. The certificate must be used at one property for 7 consecutive nights. You can have the certificate issued in anyone’s name.
-You can book the category 1-5 certificate and upgrade it later on for a more expensive category.
–There is also a 5 night hotel option, but officially that’s only available for Marriott timeshare owners. On rare occasions some reps will book the 5 night packages for non-timeshare owners.
| Hotel Category | Starpoints required for 7 nights and 132K United miles or 120K miles with other airlines | Marriott Rewards required for 7 nights and 132K United miles or 120K miles with other airlines | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marriott Category 1 | 90,000 | 270,000 | |
| Marriott Category 2 | 90,000 | 270,000 | |
| Marriott Category 3 | 90,000 | 270,000 | |
| Marriott Category 4 | 90,000 | 270,000 | |
| Marriott Category 5 | 90,000 | 270,000 | |
| Marriott Category 6 | 100,000 | 300,000 | |
| Marriott Category 7 | 110,000 | 330,000 | |
| Marriott Category 8 | 120,000 | 360,000 | |
| Marriott Category 9 | 130,000 | 390,000 | |
| Ritz Tier 1 | 140,000 | 420,000 | |
| Ritz Tier 2 | 140,000 | 420,000 | |
| Ritz Tier 3 | 140,000 | 420,000 | |
| Ritz Tier 4 | 180,000 | 540,000 | |
| Ritz Tier 5 | 180,000 | 540,000 |
Chart 3: View how many Starpoints or Marriott Rewards are needed for a nights+flights package at Starwood hotels. This option only exists for SPG category 3 and 4 properties.
With these packages you will get 50K miles credited to your choice of dozens of airlines and a night hotel stay.
| Hotel Category | Starpoints for 5 nights and 50K miles | Marriott Rewards for 5 nights and 50K miles |
|---|---|---|
| SPG Category 3 | 60,000 | 180,000 |
| SPG Category 4 | 70,000 | 210,000 |
-The Chase Marriott card offers 107,500 Rewards points (transferable to 35,833 Starpoints) for spending $3,000 and adding an additional user card. After hitting the signup bonus it’s not worth spending on this card. You’ll get 3 Marriott Rewards points per dollar by spending on a Starwood card instead!
You can view credit card offers by clicking on the “Other Credit Cards” tab on top of the DansDeals banner to view links for card offers. You can click on the link that says “View all card offers by issuing bank” and scroll down to view all card offers from the bank of your choice.
American Express is a DansDeals.com advertiser.
-The Starwood Consumer AMEX and the Starwood Business AMEX offer 25,000 signup points each with no fee for the first year.
-If you have the Platinum Card® from American Express or the The Business Platinum Card® from American Express OPEN you can call to have your Starwood account upgraded to Gold status which will then be matched to Marriott Gold as well!
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10 Comments On "Marriott 2017 Annual Category Changes; Combined Marriott And Starwood Award Chart"
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Should we expect Starwood category changes soon?
@PhillyUrbs:
Scroll down a few posts.
@Dan: You’re the best!
Do you think you will be able to use the 7 night certificate at SPG properties anytime soon?
“You can book the category 1-5 certificate and upgrade it later on for a more expensive category” – Is this with cash or essentially 30K more Marriott points to go up a category? I currently have a 7 night cat 6 cert to use and would like to expand my options. Thanks!
Marriott is being nasty for Valentines Day. I wanted to use one of my credit card anniversary nights on a category 5 hotel in Tampa and they refused me even though rooms are available.
Hi me dan I wanted to ask you your advice I am a bachelor who lives with his parents and my father files my taxes under household income I recently got flagged by Amex I have a lot of cards with them and they are requesting to see a tax form to prove I have enough income so they Amex feels they are lending responsibly if my father doesn’t want to give me his tax form what do you think I should do thank you my acct is suspended until I can prove further of my income thank you
@Mr dan: @Mr Dan, Amex is doing you a favor by illustrating why you need to develop your own credit record, starting with filing your taxes in your own name.
Just a note about the transfer from SPG points thru Marriott to southwest. We had heard of the companion tickets and were excited to get this promotion ( which did take a bit of time calling all the parties involved). Unfortunately, even though we p[aid enough points to get the week of Marriott level 9 hotel award in this process, we have been unable to get the ROME Marriott hotel level 9, which we had planned to use this promotion for this June. Despite having many rooms left in their Autograph Collection hotels, they both claimed that the award type rooms were already taken! They would sell us the better rooms for many hundreds of dollars more. This seems like a bait and switch to me as they still have many rooms left, non-suites. WHAT IS THE POINT OF SELLING A PACKAGE FOR A CATEGORY 9 LEVEL HOTEL AND THEN NOT STAND BY IT? AM I MISSING SOMETHING?
mhk- Most hotels limit the number of rooms available with award redemptions. If you had a specific hotel and time in mind, you made sure they had rooms available for award redemption before you did all these transfers right? Just having rooms available isn’t enough, they need to have award rooms available.
Lots of the spg I’ve looked at say if the lowest member rate is available but no free nights show, to call them, they MIGHT be able to accommodate you. But I wouldn’t expect it to be a guarantee.
I know I’ve read several times about people being up at all hours of the night trying to snag one more award hotel night in Tahiti, sometimes random disjointed nights, hoping to be able to patchwork a decent vacation out of them.
I’ve never been to Rome and I have no idea how far out you need to reserve for a Rome award hotel stay in June. I did just have a category 8 Marriott award hotel stay in Cancun Mexico. I had to book that Feb award stay back in early October.
Good luck to you. I can understand why you are upset but I think you may have misunderstood how hotel award nights work. I hope something works out for you.