Here’s Marriott’s timeline for August 18th merger day

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Many readers have asked what to expect on August 18th with regard to Marriott Merger Day, and we have been advising everyone to expect all-out pandemonium. It turns out that reality may include slightly more controlled chaos than we would have anticipated. A source has shared with us a timeline for how Marriott expects hopes thinks maybe prays the 18th will progress with regard to outages. Of course, this timeline doesn’t mean that things will happen according to plan. You know what they say about the best-laid plans.

a paper with a black and white text

As you can see in the image above, some of the items aren’t quite at exact time points, but they do have a timeline in mind for the way things will work. I would not get yourself too emotionally attached to this timeline. It clearly says that all times are estimations and subject to change, and I think it is very likely that these approximations will not be met. But here are Marriott’s timeline goals for August 18th — all times in Eastern time and are only estimates:

  • 12am (midnight): SPG.com and SPG app go down
  • 6am: Limited loyalty info available on the Marriott app and Marriott.com
  • 9:30am: SPG.com and Marriott.com available again for cash reservations only and members will need to update their Ritz-Carlton and Marriott apps (SPG still unavailable)
  • 2pm: Marriott.com and SPG.com available (presumably expected to be functional for award bookings) and members will need to update SPG app
  • 4pm: GMs will be notified to put out the promo materials for the new program

In short, they expect functionality to be resorted by 2pm and to be rolling out the red carpet on changes by 4pm Eastern on Saturday. It bears repeating that expectations should be set to “none” and that calling to try to book your over water bungalow in Bora Bora will probably be an exercise in futility, but it would be impressive if Marriott could pull off such a smooth transition. Personally, I highly doubt that award booking will go back online on Saturday and I’m equally doubtful that elite status will be properly transitioned before Sunday, but it is at the very least good to see that Marriott has some rather specific goals with regard to the timeline.

You can rest assured that we will be gathering more information as possible and will intend to update with developments as they roll out this weekend. For more on the transition, see Crunch time! Final pre-Marriott/SPG merger checklist and the links from that post to our full transition guide.

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