A few weeks ago it was announced that Hilton raised about a billion dollars by pre-selling points to American Express, and now Marriott has done the same, more or less. Marriott has announced that they've raised $920 million in cash through amendments to co-brand credit card agreements with Amex and Chase: $570 million is coming…
Continue reading: Marriott Raises $920 Million From Amex And Chase
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Any idea how this works for the hotels themselves? They don’t see any of this today, and Marriott must have to reserve a significant portion of this cash to actually pay the hotels when customers stay there on points, correct?
Lucky - Perhaps we can look at how it fared in the past? When AMEX and other banks pre-purchased for American and United miles back in the prior crisis, how long did it take for them to devalue those points again? We all know they did devalue them eventually, but I guess the question here is were they slower to get back to the devaluation train, or was devaluation done at the same pace pre-bulk purchase?
What is the picture of the property/hotel that you’ve used for the cover page of the article? On the water across from a small hill/mountain.
VW Murray makes a good point. Hope OMMAT can spend some time investigating that for us lazy and less knowledgeable readers.
Hopefully, this will result in Marriott's credit card partners to launch new and better promotions to capture credit card spend as Hilton has done with it sale of points to AMEX -- to wit, extension of new Free Nights from a 1 year expiration to a 2 year expiration, as well as applicability of the Free Night awards to any day of the week for new and outstanding certificates.
In addition, AMEX and Hilton also launched much more lucrative and lengthy promotion periods for use of their co-brand credit card for home bound holders.
Inasmuch as Marriott's free night extension to just 1/31/21 pales in comparison to Hilton's ~ 18 month extension for existing certificates to 8/31/21 and 2 year extension for new Free Nights, let's hope with the sale of Marriott points to these 2 lenders, that Marriott certificates will follow a similar arc.
If not, then Marriott will demonstrate to this segment of the market that they truly will remain one of the most customer unfriendly loyalty programs.
@Peetyrd - Right-click on the image, then choose Inspect, and the readout identifies it as the St Regis Bora Bora.