Please Don’t Waste Your Bilt Points With New Transfer Partner Marriott

by Gary Leff

Bilt Rewards has added Marriott Bonvoy as a points transfer partner. You get 100 Bilt points for linking your accounts, which is standard for Bilt partners.


Marriott Waikiki Beach

Please do not transfer Bilt points to Marriott just as you shouldn’t transfer them to IHG.

  • I value a Bilt point at $0.017 apiece and a Marriott point at $0.006. A one-to-one transfer represents nearly a two-thirds loss in value. Even transferring 20,000 Bilt points into 25,000 Marriott points represents around a 55% loss in value.

  • Is it possible at the extreme end to get about a penny per Marriott point? Yes. You can do so much better with Bilt. Indeed, you can book travel through the Bilt portal at 1.25 cents apiece. You’ll give up Marriott elite benefits in the process. Better to use your Bilt points for airfare and pay cash for your hotel stay.

  • Today’s the last day of a Marriott 40% bonus on purchased points (similar offers are semi-regular) that lets you buy Marriott points for a penny apiece. Better to use your Bilt points for something else and buy Marriott points if you need Marriott points. And if you want to redeem Bilt for hotel stays you’ll do far better transferring to Hyatt.

In terms of rebate value for hotel stays, Marriott can be strong. It’s just that a single Marriott point isn’t worth much, which is why top elites need to earn up to 17.5 points per dollar without bonuses for the numbers to work. Base earn in the program is 10 points per dollar (for a non-elite) compared to 5 points per dollar from Hyatt. Each Marriott point is just worth less which is why 1:1 transfers to Marriott are low value. That’s true for Bilt transfers and also for American Express and Chase transfers to Marriott as well.

Marriott may be offended by this. Bilt probably won’t like it either. But I’m laying down truth here, and it’s simple math. Marriott points transfers are simply not a good use of Bilt points. You can transfer to Air Canada Aeroplan, United or American, Turkish and more. Anyone paying a little bit of attention can do better than a transfer to Marriott. Bilt points are worth too much to move them to Marriott.

Through November 20, Bilt has increased its referral bonus from 2,500 points to 10,000 points.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. That’s because Marriott has been consistent in only one regard: increasing the amount of points required to redeem for a room. A decade ago it could be worthwhile to redeem transferable points to Marriott but that is no longer the case. Marriott points are the SkyPesos of Hotel points. Bonvoy is almost useless.

  2. I value a Bilt point at $0.017 apiece and a Marriott point at $0.006. A one-to-one transfer represents nearly a two-thirds loss in value. Even transferring 20,000 Bilt points into 25,000 Marriott points represents around a 55% loss in value.

    That is garbage math. How much you value points is totally irrelevant. You do not know the equivalence between Bilt points and Marriott points to be to claim that “one-to-one transfer represents nearly a two-thirds loss in value”.

    It should be evident that Bilt points and Marriott points are like apples oranges and should not be treated as just generic “points” because there is no such thing in the loyalty game.

    $0.017/Bilt point divided by $0.006/Marriott point does not equal 2.8.

    You cannot do that division because the denominators (Bilt point and Marriott point) are different. To do the division you need to make the two points currencies equivalent. For the same reason you cannot sum them either:

    $0.017/Bilt point + $0.006/Marriott point = ?!!!

    However, you can sum generic “points”:
    $0.017/point + $0.006/point = $0.023/point

    which is what your claim did with Bilt and Marriott points. It treated them as generic “points” and that is why it is garbage math.

    Having said that, it is close to heresy to transfer significant numbers of transferable bank points to any hotel points…

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