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You have to laugh. Or cry. I haven't decided which yet. Marriott, the 800-pound gorilla of the hotel world, just sent its Bonvoy members a crystal-clear message: your loyalty is a liability, and your booking is a suggestion, not a contract.
The news dropped on a Sunday, because of course it did. That’s when you dump the bodies. Marriott announced it was terminating its partnership with Sonder, the glorified Airbnb-for-hipsters that offers apartment-style stays. The reason? Sonder, a company that has been a financial black hole for years, finally defaulted.
The truly wild part? Guests currently checked into Sonder properties, people who booked through Marriott’s own system, were told to pack their bags and get out. Immediately. Imagine getting that email on a Sunday night, halfway through a two-week stay with your family. “Sorry, the corporate marriage is over. You have until morning to vacate the premises.”
This ain’t hospitality. It’s a hostile eviction notice with a side of loyalty points.
A Partnership Forged in Stupidity
Let’s be brutally honest. This disaster was written in the stars, in bright, flashing neon letters. When Marriott announced this deal in August 2024, I’m sure some executive got a huge bonus for adding 9,000 rooms to the portfolio. The number on the spreadsheet went up. Mission accomplished.
But did anyone in that gleaming corporate headquarters bother to run a basic Google search?
Sonder has been a train wreck in slow motion for years. The company went public in 2021 with a valuation of $2.2 billion. Today, it’s worth about $7 million. That’s not a dip; that’s a fall off a cliff into a canyon filled with burning tires. They lost over half a billion dollars in 2020 and 2021 alone. This was a company circling the drain long before Marriott ever slapped its Bonvoy logo on their doors.
This wasn't a calculated risk. No, a calculated risk is betting on a startup with a novel idea. This was like a cruise line deciding to partner with the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, just to say they'd expanded their fleet. It’s corporate malpractice masquerading as a growth strategy.
And now Marriott acts shocked—shocked!—that the company drowning in debt finally defaulted. Their official statement is a masterclass in corporate doublespeak: “Marriott’s immediate priority is supporting guests… Marriott remains committed to minimizing disruption to guests’ travel plans.”
Let’s translate that from PR-speak into English. “Supporting guests” apparently means kicking them to the curb on a moment's notice. “Minimizing disruption” means telling anyone with a future booking to pound sand. The whole situation, as detailed in a report titled Ouch: Marriott & Sonder End Partnership, Guests Abruptly Evicted, is an insult to our intelligence. What does "support" even mean here? A 10% off coupon for your next stay, provided you can find a new place to sleep tonight?
The Addiction to Growth at All Costs
This whole mess exposes the rotten core of modern corporate thinking, especially in the travel industry. It’s not about creating a better experience. It’s not about quality. It’s about one thing: net room growth.
Marriott even mentioned in its own announcement that this debacle will cause its 2025 growth to be 4.5% instead of 5%. You see? That’s what this is really about. A number on a slide in a quarterly earnings call. The actual human beings who were unceremoniously evicted from their rooms are just collateral damage in the war for a slightly better percentage point.
The entire partnership was a cheap trick to inflate their portfolio size. Marriott is like a digital hoarder, obsessed with collecting as many properties as possible, regardless of their quality or stability. They saw a chance to add 9,000 rooms in one fell swoop and they just... they didn't care about the consequences.
Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. I'm just a guy with a keyboard, not a CEO managing a global empire. Maybe there's some brilliant, 4D chess move I'm missing that makes perfect sense of this. (Spoiler: There isn't.) This is just greed, plain and simple. It's the inevitable outcome when the accountants, not the hosts, are running the hotel. It's a bad decision. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of corporate negligence. And Marriott, the company that preaches loyalty, is the one holding the gasoline.
The motivation is pretty clear, offcourse. They wanted the numbers, and they were willing to bet your vacation on a company that was already on life support.
Your Loyalty Means Nothing
So here we are. Sonder is likely dead, a footnote in the history of overvalued tech-adjacent flameouts. Marriott will absorb the tiny 0.5% dip in its growth forecast and move on, looking for the next shaky startup to bolt onto its empire. But for the people who trusted the Marriott Bonvoy name, the lesson is a harsh one. Loyalty, in the end, is a one-way street. They demand it from you, but when the chips are down, you’re just a number on a spreadsheet that needed to be deleted.