Marriott Rewards replaces Honored Guest Awards
On 6 May 1997 Marriott folded its 14-year-old Honored Guest Awards into Marriott Rewards — the first multi-brand, multi-tier hotel programme, spanning 1,000 hotels in 30 countries with 9 million members across 6 brands.
On 6 May 1997, Marriott retired Honored Guest Awards — the 14-year-old programme that covered roughly 300 hotels — and folded it into something new: Marriott Rewards. One programme, 9 million members, 1,000 hotels across 30 countries, spanning 6 brands.
The numbers are the story. This is the first multi-brand, multi-tier hotel programme, and the jump from ~300 hotels to 1,000 turns a single-chain perk into a genuine loyalty currency. Every brand under the Marriott umbrella now earns and burns into one balance, with tiers layered on top.
The bigger consequence took two decades to land. The consolidation playbook Marriott wrote here — buy or build brands, fold every programme into one — is the same one that later swallowed SPG and produced Bonvoy, the programme Indian credit cards transfer into today.
Our take: 1997 is when hotel loyalty stopped being a punch card and became a currency. If your points end up in Bonvoy, this is the day the pipe was laid.