For each of the last three years, I shared the hotel observations of a reader who each year racked up more than 240 elite nights on the road, mostly with Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG hotels.
Índice
By the end of last year, this anonymous correspondent had already started reducing their Marriott stays and concluded that Hyatt is the best chain if you can stick to full service properties not owned or managed by bad actors – but they don’t have a big enough footprint and too many of their hotels in the U.S. are limited service. So he kept earning Marriott Ambassador status, and looking elsewhere when he could.
He keeps expecting his travel to slow down. He’s tired of all the travel, and the mistreatment on the road. This year he cut it to ‘just’ 182 actual nights in hotels – half the nights of the year. He reports back after another year with his observations on where the chains stand.
I quit Marriott in 2025 after having top-tier Ambassador status since before Bonvoy
This is the expanded, unvarnished update to my analyses from 2024, 2023, and 2022.
2025 was the year I walked away from Marriott after holding top-tier ambassador status longer than the Bonvoy program has existed. It was the year I realized the relationship between traveler and hotel chain had fundamentally changed. And it was the year I began rebuilding my entire loyalty strategy for what comes next.
Leaving Marriott after 17 years and more than 2,700 nights and 14.5 million points was not emotional. It was rational. But it was also unmistakably the end of a long loyalty story.
I’ve been an ambassador elite every year since before Bonvoy existed. I survived the eroding of the Marriott family legacy under the former CEO, customer-service black holes, IT failures, numerous devaluations, and the gradual but unmistakable erosion of the guest experience. I stayed loyal long after many others had already declared Marriott a lost cause.
The elite benefits that franchisees ignore
Marriott’s loyalty program depends on one assumption: that properties will honor elite benefits.
One stay at the Grand Galvez Resort, Autograph Collection crystallized everything that is wrong with Marriott. The property refused to include coffee with the elite breakfast benefit.
If a hotel feels safe denying the most basic part of an elite benefit to an ambassador member, the problem is structural. This isn’t an isolated example of a cheating property. Rather, this has been happening for years. Marriott knows about it but does nothing to fix the breakfast benefit for guests with platinum, titanium, and ambassador statuses.
Unless you’re at a Marriott-managed Ritz-Carlton, Edition, or St. Regis — properties where corporate has real control — you are effectively staying at whatever level of cost-cutting the franchise owner decides is necessary that week.
The brand standards that once differentiated Marriott have evaporated.
Ambassador status is supposed to be the pinnacle of Marriott loyalty: dedicated support, reliable upgrades, personalized service, and recognition that you were among the chain’s highest-value customers.
But ambassador status has become a label without substance and a tier without tangible benefits over and above platinum and titanium statuses. It’s just not worth spending $23,000 and staying more than 100 nights.
After a series of consecutive bad stays, I ran the numbers and determined that I had already spent around $15,000 on Marriott stays and completed about 60 nights toward requalification. That was the moment I quit Bonvoy cold turkey.
I’ll still redeem points — I have accumulated several million — but I will not spend any money on cash stays or at properties with incidentals. My lifetime titanium status is enough moving forward.
What replaces Marriott
Leaving a giant like Marriott forces a complete strategic reset. You don’t just swap in a new chain and move on.
After several years of using Hyatt as a backup for Marriott, it’s now my first choice moving forward.
It’s not because Hyatt has the best hotels. It doesn’t. Hyatt Place is still an awful brand. There’s also no denying that Hyatt has, in recent years, neglected its traditional, full-service brands — think Hyatt Regency and Grand Hyatt — as it pursued shiny new objects ranging from all-inclusive resorts to niche boutiques. Hyatt is also doing more franchising, which it didn’t do before (at least when compared to Marriott, IHG, and Wyndham).
Still, Hyatt’s World of Hyatt program remains the spiritual successor to the old Starwood Preferred Guest. It’s reliable, elite-focused, and benefit-driven.
When Hyatt says breakfast is included, it is. When Hyatt says late checkout is guaranteed, it is. When Hyatt confirms a suite upgrade, it happens.
IHG: Imperfect but necessary supplement
IHG and One Rewards are neither a great chain nor a great program.
But it has a footprint large enough to fill in the map where Hyatt is absent. Realistically, it’s the only chain that can compete with Marriott on sheer geographic distribution, especially in rural markets, small cities, secondary airports, and flyover country.
But that scale comes with trade-offs.
Namely, the quality is wildly inconsistent. Intercontinental, Regent, and Kimpton can be excellent.
The simple reality is that too many properties flagged under too many IHG brands hover around the barely adequate mark. When Holiday Inn, which was once a reliable full-service brand, eliminated à la carte breakfast, including cooked-to-order eggs, it signaled a systematic lowering of service expectations.
I can tolerate 25 nights a year in Holiday Inn Express. I can’t tolerate 100-plus nights, especially when IHG points are among the weakest currencies.
Thanks to repeated devaluations, an average traveler would need about 130 nights at $170 per night to earn enough points for five nights at a top-tier property (think the Intercontinental Paris Le Grand).
I ended my IHG pursuit after 40 nights, which was enough to earn the One Rewards lounge access membership. That will give me access to club lounges at Intercontinental properties, which, when good, are often better than club lounges at comparable Hyatt or Marriott properties. Since I only stay with Intercontinental a couple of times a year, that level of engagement with IHG seems sufficient.
Where I ended the year and what my 2026 looks like
As 2025 ends, I racked up 182 actual butt-in-bed nights between Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG. I had three or four random stays at Hilton, Royal Sonesta, and non-chain hotels.
2026 will be the first year I fully live out the implications of quitting Marriott. It will be the first year my travel plan looks like this:
- Hyatt is my primary hotel chain.
- IHG supplements markets where Hyatt has no presence.
- Marriott award stays are purely transactional.
- Elite status is no longer something I chase — it’s something I evaluate.
- The quality of the trip matters more than the accrual of points.
It is a fundamental shift in how I view loyalty. The emotional component has disappeared. Only the practical remains.
A loyalty program exists for one purpose: to retain high-value customers. The chains must now earn my business, not assume it.
Marriott not only failed at that — it stopped even pretending. The company let franchisees shape the guest experience with almost no enforcement.
When a customer who easily spends $200,000 walks away, it should set off alarm bells at Marriott headquarters. It should trigger someone from corporate to contact the customer to find out why they’ve stopped staying and spending money with Marriott.
Instead, it’s simply another sign of a company adrift. The truth is simple: Marriott left me long before I left Marriott.
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