SPG hotel category changes - mixed impact for India

Overnight, both SPG and Marriott announced hotel category changes - something quite common for this time of the year, though IHG led the pack for 2016. The Marriott changes have limited, though adverse, effects for India, so I'll write about that a little later in the day. More important are the SPG changes, which this post discusses.




In all, 282 hotels are changing category, which is about 25% of all SPG hotels worldwide. Of these, 114 hotels are going down in category, whereas 168 hotels are going up. These changes take effect from 1 March 2016. You can find the full list here, however here's the quick analysis:
  • Africa and Middle East: 4 up, 15 down
  • Asia Pacific: 49 up, 26 down
  • Europe: 22 up, 16 down
  • Latin America: 10 up, 22 down
  • North America: 83 up, 35 down.

Points with a Crew has this map showing all 282 category changes.

In India, 8 hotels are going up in category, while 4 are going down.


My take on these India-specific changes are as follows:
  • I can understand why they would make ITC Grand Bharat so difficult to redeem nights at, given it is a premium property. I'm only surprised that they've made the change in as short a period of time as they have, considering the hotel opened only a couple of years or so ago.
  • I would've expected a category decrease for the Le Meridien Bangalore, so this change surprises me extremely! I stayed here a few years back and was shocked at the state of the hotel.
  • I can understand a small increase for ITC Windsor Bangalore, but the effect of 1 category point rank change is about 4000 Starpoints a night, which makes this redemption pointless (pun unintended!).
  • I do believe the ITC Rajputana and ITC Sonar category changes are fair - I've been at both places, and they've traditionally been rated far lower than they're worth, in my view.
  • The sweetest spot in this set of changes is the downgrade of the St Regis Mumbai from category 4 to 3, which now makes it available at 7000 points a night, which I think is great value.

The St Regis Mumbai will now become a category 3 hotel from category 4

As a reminder, here are the points requirements for various categories of SPG hotels:

Click above for a larger image

You can read my trip reports on some of these hotels, by clicking on the links below:

These changes take effect from 1 March 2016, but the old rates are valid for bookings till 29 February 2016, irrespective of stay date. And since you can lock in your rates, you have till the end of February 2016 to make award bookings at the old rates, for hotels undergoing category increases.

Overall, these changes will affect my valuation of hotel loyalty program points, with SPG being effectively devalued (though in reality, they aren't changing the points requirement for any of the categories). My March valuation update will have all of that.

What's your take on the category changes? Any hotel-specific comments?

Comments

  1. PranayMarch 9, 2016 at 11:14 AM

    1) The "full list here " link in the article above leads to the SPG website where old categorisation is being displayed still now e.g ITC Grand Bharat is a category 5 property and there are no category 6 properties in India. Where can I get the category wise list of all SPG properties in India?
    2) Which is the cheapest SPG property in India to do a mattress run?(I need to do a mattress run by this month end)

    Thanks and Regards
    Pranay

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Miles & Even MoreMarch 9, 2016 at 5:29 PM

      Hi - that's surprising because the same link takes me to the page where all hotels are displayed (you can filter on the top right). And on this, Grand Bharat is cat 6.

      Cheapest SPG - where do you live? You can search nearby locations, since that will minimise travel costs. Otherwise, Aloft Chandigarh and Coimbatore usually are the cheapest.

      Delete

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