Marriott & Starwood Hotels Merger Complete!
Today, Marriott & Starwood have officially merged. After months of negotiations and talks about the merger might fall apart, it’s officially done. As a very loyal Starwood member (100+ nights this year), I was afraid it would mean poor award redemptions but Marriott did the right thing and is offering a 1 SPG to 3 Marriott points exchange ratio. Awesome!
Conversion Rate
The programs won’t merge until 2018 so I still have time to enjoy the benefits. Effective today, I now have Marriott Platinum Elite and Ritz Carlton Platinum Elite status as a reciprocal benefit. This now opens up more hotels in which I can receive my Platinum benefits. I still prefer Starwood hotels but you never know if I’ll end up in a location with only Marriott or Ritz Carlton as an option.
Reciprocal Benefits
More details will come out in the coming months but as of today details can be found here including how to link accounts which seems to be down at the moment: http://members.marriott.com
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[…] Status matching from SPG Platinum to Marriott Platinum Elite earns you United Silver status as that’s a […]
[…] As mentioned back in 2016, the programs weren’t going to merge until 2018. Marriott has announced that on August 1st, 2018, the Starwood and Marriott programs will merge into a single program. All of your SPG points will convert to Marriott points at a 1:3 ratio. Just this week, Marriott announced the new award chart mapping hotels to their new categories. Check out the chart here: https://points-redemption.marriott.com/category-change […]