Online shopping portals can be a great way to pick up additional miles & points for purchases you’d make anyway. Just for following a specific link you can earn bonus points in addition to the ones you’d earn anyway for credit card spend. The number of bonus miles you earn per dollar spent varies greatly by retailer.
While these portals are great for everyday purchases, there are also sometimes bonuses for making purchases with travel providers, which can be a great way to double dip. Lately we’re seeing these more often than ever before.
At the moment the AAdvantage eShopping Portal is offering 10 miles per dollar spent with Marriott hotels.
Ordinarily they offer two miles per dollar spent, so this bonus is 5x as good as usual.
Note the following terms & conditions regarding this promotion:
Rooms offered at specially negotiated rates, where the customer is required to be affiliated with or employed by a particular company or organization to receive the special rate (e.g., corporate rate, government rate or the Marriott employee rate) are not eligible. Rooms offered at specially negotiated rates for Marriott Bonvoy™ members (e.g. Marriott Bonvoy™ offer discount, Marriott Bonvoy™ offer package), with the exception of Marriott Bonvoy™ Member rates are not eligible. Rooms that are booked or upgraded and paid for using redeemed Marriott Bonvoy™ Points are not eligible. Rooms booked at the brands Ritz-Carlton Destination Club, Design Hotels, Bulgari, Atlantis, Autograph Collection, Bulgari Hotel, London, Joshua G.E. Medical Corp. Conference Center, Jesse Jones Rotary Conference Center, Marriott Ranch, Protea Hotel Amani Beach, Protea Hotel Mbweni Ruins, The Ritz-Carlton London, U.S. Postal Service Conference Center, Four Points by Sheraton Havana, The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, Autograph Collection are not eligible. Not eligible on purchases made with coupon or discount codes that are not found on this site. Not eligible on gift cards, gift certificates or any other similar cash equivalents.
What’s so great here is that these portals are simply redirecting you to Marriott’s website, meaning you can still earn your Marriott points and elite nights as usual. That’s huge. I value American miles at ~1.4 cents each, so to me this is like an additional ~14% return on Marriott stays.
This is very different than booking through something like Rocketmiles, where you can earn miles for hotel stays, though that’s in lieu of earning hotel points. Here you get the best of both worlds, since you earn 10 American miles per dollar spent plus whatever Marriott points you’d usually earn.
Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card
Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card
I’m not sure how long the increased bonus will last (I’m guessing it might just be valid today), so I’d recommend booking ASAP. Only hotel stays booked through the above links qualify, so if you can rebook a stay at the same cost then I’d highly recommend doing so.
We’ve seen this promotion every couple of weeks lately, so while this isn’t unheard of, it’s not that common. Lastly, keep in mind that you can stack this with Marriott’s current promotion offering double Bonvoy points for stays.
(Tip of the hat to Frequent Miler)
Is all Autograph Collection hotels excluded via AA or is it just their wording? Their support says it is excluded but website such as Ebates word it clearer to say what brands are excluded and which hotels specifically are excluded like Atlantis Autograph Collection.
So was rates don't count.... Kinda useless promotion...
I booked one of these back in March 4th and stayed at the hotel on the 15th-19th and got my points credit to my AA Shopping Portal around March 26th. The points however didn't show up on my AA account, only in the AA Shopping portal.
As tempting as this sounds, it appears that there are more stories of disappointment than success. Not just on this blog, but others as well. I too use a corporate code for some stays, others I use AAA, etc. I don't have the time to chase miles from multiple stays in excess of 12+ weeks in some cases. If only there were less middle men involved.
@DS - I had to submit two claims for AA and UA credits on Marriott stays late in 2018. Took 12 weeks total.
@Lisa same experience here. It looks like cartera is running a nice little scam here. They have screwed me out of credits on almost $4k in hotels.
@DS I don't know what the specifics of your situation are but for me miles didn't post until after I actually made the stay. Go in to your account in the aadvantage shopping website. There should be two tabs, one that says transactions and another that says store visits. Go under store visits and go to the day that you made your reservation. If you see your purchase listed there your order has been tracked...
@DS I don't know what the specifics of your situation are but for me miles didn't post until after I actually made the stay. Go in to your account in the aadvantage shopping website. There should be two tabs, one that says transactions and another that says store visits. Go under store visits and go to the day that you made your reservation. If you see your purchase listed there your order has been tracked even if miles haven't posted yet and you should be ok. If you don't see anything there than your order was for some reason never recorded in the first place (do you have an ad blocker?)
FYI
My aunt had a very BAD experience when booked Marriott on UA and AA e-s portals; she found it did NOT work. From Sep to Dec 2018, with her own credit card she booked 9 stays at MI and used UA or AA eshop carts; the miles were 1 or 2 or 5 for 1 $ spent, depending in days booked. She did not get any miles to her UA or AA acc....
FYI
My aunt had a very BAD experience when booked Marriott on UA and AA e-s portals; she found it did NOT work. From Sep to Dec 2018, with her own credit card she booked 9 stays at MI and used UA or AA eshop carts; the miles were 1 or 2 or 5 for 1 $ spent, depending in days booked. She did not get any miles to her UA or AA acc. She FU and got a reply from Cartera in MA; they said they are the contractor for MI+ UA+AA eshop, among others. Mid Oct they asked her for her reservation numbers which she sent . Mid Nov, still no miles, she em Cartera again. December they asked for copies of her MI bills ; and added they have to open a new case bec time passes. She found they went too far, and closed the file; too much time wasted (2- 3 months), not worth; a few of her friends too, had the same bad experience, and stopped. They said: lack of transparency and poor management somewhere.....
thanks @Andrey_Popov. just to clarify, if i use my corporate card but don't request the corporate rate i should be ok? anyone know if i can do this for multiple reservations?
@Michael, right here:
"Rooms offered at specially negotiated rates, where the customer is required to be affiliated with or employed by a particular company or organization to receive the special rate (e.g., corporate rate, government rate or the Marriott employee rate) are not eligible."
I work for Verizon and we use the corporate rate to stay at Marriotts when travelling but it looks like I won't get United miles if I use it :(
@Andrey_Popov where are you seeing that in the Terms and Conditions?
Am I reading this correctly that hotels booked with corporate codes aren't eligible? If so that's a major bummer :-/
Insane promotion. I booked this last time through the United portal. Took a few weeks but I finally got my United email saying that my bonus points have posted.
You can also stack this with the Awesome New Offer for Marriott Stays
https://onemileatatime.com/marriott-amex-offers/
Isn't that correct???
Still haven't received my miles from the last time they ran this promotion. How long do they take to post?!
Any idea if the name of member for Marriott and AA need to match? Will be booking 2 rooms (one under my name and the other my partner). Will be easier if I can consolidate the miles earned to just one AA account.
Do you need to be an American resident to use the shopping portals for booking hotels? I was under the impression you do. Being UK based I usually use Virgin portal (as the BA portal no longer ties with Marriot)