St. Regis Macao Brazenly Cuts Elite Breakfast Benefit

But do the Bonvoy terms and conditions exempt this property? If they don't, they can't refuse to provide a breakfast. But then again, the provided breakfast may be inedible. The Sheraton at Toronto's airport, a Marriott corporate-managed property, is only offering toast or a muffin with coffee as the breakfast benefit.

It’s a St Regis in Macao (Las Vegas of Asia), and it’s also a property in Asia. Even Fairfield in Asia provides some of the best breakfast you can comparatively find in North America…

It’s more greed than anything else. I am sure this property might have been attraction a lot of award stays and this is being done to squeeze revenue out of them. That duty manager admitted they will honor breakfast if guests insist, so yeah this point is probably true

The fact that Marriott is letting this hotel cut the benefit for Ambassadors is totally pathetic. Ritz and Edition should offer free breakfast to these high-value guests.

If you book through something like AMEX FHR or Virtuoso you’ll get breakfast each day. So this really hurts elites that use points and want a free breakfast. If anything, given the cost of staying at these hotels, elites should get breakfast at all luxury hotels including RCs and EDITIONs. This seems to be headed in the wrong way. And like others said, why is Marriott letting this hotel skip the brand standard of elite breakfast?

It seems to me that establishments will keep pushing boundaries as long as they can, since loyal customers will continue to support them and blog about their experiences, influencing others to follow suit. Until people start voting with their wallets, there won’t be enough incentive for these places to implement positive, meaningful change.

Colour me cynical - I am fairly confident that this elimination of this perk is a testing of the waters that will be rolled out to all properties.

Inconsistency weakens a brand. In my experience, I like to think of the Bonvoy Loyalty Program Terms and Conditions, not as a list of specified benefits that you are entitled to for your loyalty, but as a roulette wheel, with several spots labeled ... "Thank You for Playing Along", "Sorry, not Sorry", and "Dare to Dream."

Where this is going is obvious. Hotel owners, especially in the US, have complained about providing elite breakfasts for years. In the past year or so, Marriott owners have been complaining about increased costs, particularly labor. Hotel profitability growth has stalled in many markets due to higher costs (labor, interest, insurance, materials, loyalty programs), so Marriott has started to again promise "cost savings" to owners.

Within five years, I would guess Marriott's luxury brands (St Regis, W, Ritz Carlton, Edition, Luxury Collection, maybe even JW Marriott) will move away from free elite breakfast if they already haven't. Select service brands like Courtyard are already on the credit system. Brands like Residence Inn will continue to offer free breakfast for everyone. Marriott still cares about breakfast at its "business hotels," so Marriott brand will still have lounges, but I would expect the "breakfast benefit with no lounge" will be cut.

Hilton has moved to a credit system, while Hyatt retains a good free breakfast for its elites (though it should be noted that Hyatt's elite breakfast is only provided to Globalists, which is much more restrictive than Marriott or Hilton's current status based benefits). This differentiation doesn't seem to drive better or worse results either way. So expect Marriott to continue to cut back where they can.

With Marriott revenue and net profits at all-time highs, Marriott has no reason to not continue on its path of devaluation and reduction of tier benefits. Disaffected loyalty program members have had no effect on its operating results. In short, as much as we might think otherwise, we truly don’t matter. Accept this reality and adjust your game accordingly. Best of luck.

As a reminder to everyone, the lounge benefit has been all but eliminated via exemptions. From the terms and conditions:

Lounge Access is not offered at the following brands: The Ritz-Carlton, Ritz-Carlton Reserve, St. Regis, EDITION, The Luxury Collection, W Hotels, Design Hotels, Apartments by Marriott Bonvoy, Tribute Portfolio, Gaylord Hotels, Trailborn Properties, Four Points, SpringHill Suites, Protea Hotels, Fairfield, AC Hotels, Aloft, Moxy Hotels, City Express, Four Points Flex, Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites, Element, Marriott Vacation Club, Marriott Grand Residence Club, Sheraton Vacation Club, Westin Vacation Club, and at The Phoenician Residences, a Luxury Collection Residence Club, Scottsdale.

This goes hand-in-glove with another topic that's popping up in OMAAT: upgrade fails. Hotels post signs at checkin telling guests how many elites are staying. It's clear that hoteliers (Marriott's actual customers, remember) feel that there are "too many elites". Expect Marriott to help with this problem, by going easy on violators by diluting elite benefit delivery. How long before Titanium is the Breakfast threshold?

Tier benefits have become less & less realizable over the years. Things boiled down to the economic value of points & nothing more. With the recent devaluation points & the leaked (yet to come) devaluation, my sense is that the value of a Marriott point is on a glide path to the value of a Hilton point (0.5 CPP). @FTW Delta Diamond was correct in saying (in comments to another article) that someone just starting out doesn't have a chance.

DenB makes a good point about how these hotel franchises don’t care about you. They used to pretend to care or did care a bit when you complained or provided feedback. Now, they either ignore you or give you some lame excuse including someone else from another department will get back to you but actually never did.

This is how it is with Hilton. How many silver, gold, and diamond elites from the U.S. are there with those AMEX Hilton branded CCs? Hilton corporate just don’t care about you as do many of their real customers the hoteliers. IHG still does care because it is more difficult to earn Diamond and those forty nights for lounge access. No credit card shortcut for Diamond or lounge access. No free elite nights either because of credit cards like Hyatt or Marriott.

On the broader topic of loyalty programs, today, CNN has this headline:

Frequent flyers have spent years staying loyal to airlines. Now airlines are giving them ‘the middle finger’

Fred - while Marriott revenue and net profits are at all time highs, hotel owner profits (not revenues, profits) in many cases were down in 2024 and are expected to shrink again in 2025. In some markets, profits never recovered to 2019 levels and are down meaningfully (think markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles). This is why you are seeing Marriott go through another round of "owner cost savings" initiatives.

Well it's Macao, the Vegas of the most money-focused culture on the planet.

Not surprised the luxury hotels in that market continue to nickel and dime the high rollers...

Your comments and my comments are not mutually exclusive. Marriott's financial position allows it to make concessions to owners at the expense of elites.

Does that mean, no need to try to reach Titanium again this year? Well Globalist with Hyatt looks Fine and Park Hyatt's can Give St Regis a run for the money.(Even though I loved St Regis KL last month).
Then again Chinese have figured out to "Game" the system at Marriotts like they did with Hyatts.
I saw Chinese guests in Hyatts in Bali,KL,Jakarta,etc that definitely did not belong in the Lounges. they were questioned multiple times upon entering which slowed down the Lines. Their favorite method was to BBB (Bring Big Bags) and take everything Off the Tables. They loved to scream and spit at the poor Help when they try to question their practices.

I thought it was the beginning of the end when Hyatt Centric Waikiki just decided breakfast wasn't their thing for Globalists anymore, and nobody at Hyatt HQ could do a thing about it. (Despite it being an "owned" property.) It turns out that while a hotel can ignore program rules in some way, not everyone does it.

It makes me wonder: what sort of back-end conversations happen when properties go rogue? Is it a permission-not-forgiveness situation? In any normal contract, they should be ejected from the program, but hotels are the real customers these days. Will be interested to see how it plays out longer run.

Thank you for pointing this out -- very interesting article.
AF was not on my list simply because of sooo many strikes many years ago, but I guess it would be a right time to try it.

It would be great to read an article about this also in this forum.

Are there any Marriott properties where lounge access benefits are still offered?? Looks like only hotels that are branded Marriott and nothing else?

It sounds like one of the instances where one is penny-wise, but pound-foolish...
Macau doesn't strike me as a jurisdiction with high labour or food costs (rents may be another matter). Do they really expect elites will gladly pay for full-price breakfasts, if not offered it as a freebie? I bet many will opt for a quick bite at a local cafe, or even at the usual Starbucks, or Costa, or whatever.
Hotels are going to continue wasting tons of food from breakfast buffet scraps anyway.
Removing that perk is quite damaging image-wise. But, it seems, hotel corporations don't really care...

Ben, thanks for highlighting this case. However, I think a general article on the economics of hotel loyalty programs vs airtight frequent flyer programs would be really interesting now.

For all the complaints about airline programs devaluing, there is still a legitimate value case for being loyal to an airline if you live in a hub, and there are still very tangible benefits to achieving elite status. But we know airlines have to do this as the loyalty programs have become the most profitable divisions in most cases.

I’d be interested to understand more about why hotel groups just do not care at all. Benefits are so much better and more consistent booking through Amex FHR or Virtuoso, so there seems to be no value proposition to elite status? (Maybe excepting Hyatt Globalist)

To be clear, I understand that hotels are giving in to their franchised owners to save costs. But whereas the Aadvantage program accounts for a majority of profits at AA, for example, what proportion of group profit does Marriott see coming from Bonvoy. It cannot be much since they are so willing to eliminate brand value and consistency?

Just a lot of noise around the edges
thousands of overly entitled pathetic elites who think after their 100 or more nights a year they deserve something like a complimentary breakfast! Or a coffee.
Well Bonvoy corporate idiots and greedy hotels they do! Your guests make or break your success

Kerry, I have some knowledge in this space. The main issue is that while airlines bear all the cost of operations (including pilots, flight attendances, airplane maintenance), hotel companies like Marriott generally do not - hotel owners do. This creates much different incentives. If Lucky wants me to continue to a post on this he can reach out to me 🙂

St Regis Macau is owned and operated by Las Vegas Sands, founded by the late and lamentable Sheldon Adelson. The company made a $5.17B profit last year, which was a 213% increase over 2023, so the remaining Adelson family would have cleared $2.79B from their 54% stake. Providing free breakfast for Marriott elites seems like a drop in the ocean compared with that, but I guess too much is never enough, even when you're banking more than fifty-three million a week.

Why am I a Diamond HH instead of a Bonvoy super star?

Free Breakfast! Really nothing else except that most of my travel is outside North America where Diamond really means something.

If there was any chance of switching this change is a breaker.

Contents in this article are in line with what we all blatantly see... the constant devaluing of Elite benefits. Marriott is perhaps the worst - constantly and quietly working through this reductionist process. Soon the Elite status will not be worth having.
I also have IHG Ambassador status and so far they have been more clear and consistent in their offerings (although they never did give as many benefits as Marriott historically).
The take-home message for all of us is to not focus on loyalty any more - just look for the best deal.

"Loyalty" is definitely dying in the travel world. But a lot of the old ones will continue to remain brand loyal for years despite losing perks. There's also been a lot of consolidation and these brands have gobbled up most of their smaller competitors so they aren't really incentivized to compete as much anymore.