Venice

newlondon: Marriott and Starwood have joined awards programs. If you'd like, you could use your Marriott points in one of Venice's good Starwood properties. I'm pretty sure I'm correct about this.

Sorry to be picky, but the programs are still separate. The linking allows for the highest status level to apply to both. If you don't have enough points you have to transfer them from one program to another. One Starwood point equals three Rewards points. Not a big deal, just something you have to do. Thanks for the information on Venice, we are going in October '17 as well. Regards

Regent put us up in the Venice Hilton Molino Stucky the night before our cruise in September.

They also arranged for a bus to take us to the ship the following morning but we opted to spend the day sightseeing instead and caught a water taxi to the cruise terminal later that afternoon.

Incidentally, when my parents stayed there last year, they discovered it was also the hotel of choice for Mrs Obama & her daughters :)