As part of Marriott’s announcement on Monday that it would hybridize the Marriott Rewards, Starwood Preferred Guest, and Ritz-Carlton Rewards programs this August, the company also relaunched its Moments marketplace, which sells everything from zip-line excursions to sumo wrestling tutorials and cooking classes with master chefs.

For the first time, loyal guests can both earn and redeem points by shopping for these experiences—110,000 of them in all, across 1,000 global destinations. But anyone, regardless of their participation in Marriott Rewards, will also be able to buy a sunset cruise off Marriott’s shelf with good, old-fashioned dollars.

“The opportunity for us is to expand the travel experience for our members,” David Flueck, Marriott’s senior vice president of loyalty tells Bloomberg. “They’ve come to rely on Marriott for incredible brands and hotels; now we can deliver more to them.”

The pivot, he says, is about growing from a hotel brand to a lifestyle brand—something that Airbnb has already done with its own Experiences platform.

“Every brand in the travel space has to be more full-service,” explains Deanna Ting, hospitality editor at the travel industry website Skift. “It’s not a question of should they do this. For Marriott to compete, they have to do this.”

Here’s what it means for you.

Scale, Not Exclusivity
Marriott’s overhaul of Moments—a platform that previously existed on a much smaller scale—is a direct result of the company’s spring 2017 acquisition of Place Pass, a meta-search site for local experiences.

But of the 100,000 plus experiences it now offers, only 8,000 are exclusive to Marriott and of the company’s own design.

Some of those include VIP access or front-row box seats at venues around the world, which Flueck says will be available “at every show.” Another subset are what Flueck describes as “once in a lifetime” experiences: a cooking class with Daniel Boulud in his private test kitchen, for instance, or surf lessons with legendary wave-chaser Laird Hamilton. Only a few dozen of these opportunities are available globally at any given time on an auction-only basis, selling for anywhere from 7,500 to 352,500 points; they cannot be purchased with dollars.

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