Between May 18 and July 15, Marriott ran their biggest-ever points purchase bonus offering 60% more points for the same money. Now they have brought this bonus back.
- Through November 25, receive a 60% bonus on purchases of at least 2,000 points.
- November 26 through December 22 that bonus drops to 50%.
- You can buy 3 times as many points as usual, with the annual purchase cap increased from 50,000 to 150,000 during this offer.
This is effectively prepaying for stays at a discount: they’re willing to sell you points at a cost per point of $0.0078.
Worth It For Hotel Stays?
Prior to the latest round of hotel category changes I valued Marriott points at 7/10ths of a cent apiece. I would probably now value these points around $0.0065 each.
It’s definitely possible to get more value out of these points than Marriott will be charging, especially if you need to top off for a specific award and for some of the chain’s most expensive and least expensive hotels. If you’re redeeming for properties in the middle though you aren’t likely to get much more value out of these points than what you pay for them, and you’re effectively prepaying through a points purchase.
My one caution here is that nearly all hotels in the world should be pricing at low season points rates just about every day, since occupancy levels are so low and Marriott Bonvoy is in little jeopardy of having to reimburse properties at above-normal rates. Yet that’s not been Marriott’s practice.
Worth It For Airline Mileage Transfers
I’d also point out that since 60,000 Marriott points transfer to 25,000 airline miles in a wide variety of programs, you have the opportunity to use this bonus to purchase miles in even obscure airline frequent flyer programs at 1.872 cents per mile. This can be a potentially great deal with Aegean, Alaska Airlines, Asiana, Japan Airlines, and Turkish Airlines. Outside of those, though, it’s more than I’d buy other airline currencies for.
Marriott has doubled the price of its most premium hotels in select markets from just one year ago.From 50,000 to 100,000 per night during a pandemic??!! when far less folks are traveling
You really have to wonder about who is left at corporate making the decisions now.
I rarely stay in their hotels now as they have destroyed SPG value.
Even the ratty IHG program is looking better for now
I wouldn’t buy points from them at 75% off as they are not to be trusted and simply evil and greedy.Imagine if your bank said we are going to devalue your savings account in half and charge you more to withdraw depending on the season and how busy we may be
What kind words would you say?
I can think of more than a few choice words however I like my ability to post in this helpful & informative forum 😉 🙂
@dwondermeant. Good point. And a historical example: how about if your government said you have to sell us all your savings that you hold in gold at $20 and ounce and one day later we’ll sell it back to you at $35 an ounce. That’s what FDR did in 1933. Google Executive Order 6102.
I agree with the airline transfer angle but I am afraid to hold too Marriot points right now. Immediate use only I’d say.
I have around 120,000 points plus a 5 night stay in Lisbon booked for April (that I will cancel and get the points redeposited if necessary) so not interested in buying any.
Lifetime Titanium and I actually do get upgraded most of the time so no issue w Marriott just that I have around a million combined Hilton, Marriott and IHG points so don’t need any more
Does anyone know how long the purchased points take to hit your account? Need to book a Hawaii point savers rate quick but need to top off first.
They still need to roll back the devaluation they did in March. Devaluing in a Pandemic is inexcusable, and they did roll back for Asia but not North America?
I went ahead and pulled the trigger on this (though not quite to the maximum of the promo) as a top-off to some points that I already had in the program. Usually, a specific program is a dead-end – but with some 40 airline partners available to transfer out to at consistent rates, Bonvoy is probably one of the most flexible points currencies out there.