It’s the time of year where we start getting news from all the hotel
chains about their hotel category changes. That is, not changes to award
charts or amounts but rather where individual hotels fall into those categories. Some hotels move up categories, that is become more
expensive in terms of the number of points required to redeem for free
night, while others go down in price and become cheaper to redeem for.
Today, one of the most popular hotel chains and frequent guest programs, Marriott Bonvoy revealed their changes for 2021.
These changes will take effect on March 3 and only about 3% of their
hotels worldwide will be changing categories. That’s nowhere even close to the 2,000+ hotels that changed last year. Of the 201 hotels changing this year 150 of them are going down in categories and only 51 are going up.
Here in Canada a total of 8 properties out of 270+ will be changing
categories and we do pretty weel. 6 of our hotels are actually going down a category while only 2 are moving up,
a 75-25% split. Vancouverites should be happy that they now once again have a Category 5 option downtown (for those staycations utilizing the annual free night award off the Marriott Bonvoy American Express card) as the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre drops from Category 6 to Category 5. Here are the other changes in Canada
- Courtyard Halifax Dartmouth moves down from Category 4 to 3
- Courtyard Montreal Brossard moves down from Category 4 to 3
- Element Toronto Airport moves down from Category 4 to 3
- Fairfield by Marriott Edmonton International Airport moves up from Category 1 to 2
- Fairfield by Marriott Montreal Downtown moves down from Category 5 to 4
- Four Points by Sheraton Edmonton International Airport moves up from Category 1 to 2
- JW Marriott Parq Vancouver moves down from Category 7 to 6
Overall this is one of the smallest updates we have seen from Marriott since we started tracking these changes years ago. Given the current global situation this isn’t unexpected given the current situation worldwide although I would have thought we may have seen even more hotels go down in categories to encourage people to use their points and free night awards in an attempt to bolster occupancy rates.
As we always advise when these changes are announced you should book now
for hotels that are going up in price and hold off on booking if a
hotel you are eyeing will go down in points cost.
You can check out all the changes happening to 201 hotels globally here. (They have a search box where you can filter the results to put in a specific hotel, city or country.)