Starwood’s significant devaluation got plenty of attention, but Marriott quietly made significant adjustments to its own hotel categories to much less fanfare. It’s been discovered, and is being discussed on Flyertalk. The summary:

Changes in MR redemption were effective March 2, 2007. 14 hotels went down one category level, 535 went up one category level.

And one member’s calculation of the impact of the change:

Some quick calculations….approximately 20% of Marriott Rewards properties were impacted and the change is reported to be a 1 category increase. On a 1 night stay, that is an increase of about 33% across the categories. So it appears to be an overall devaluation of about 6-7% (33% x 20%).



I can live with this as it is in-line with overall inflation in hotel room rates, unlike the ridiculous almost 20% devaluation over at SPG. I just wish Marriott had chosen to provide some notice that this was going to occur (which SPG did).