Marriott Bonvoy has just rolled out a positive change, though perhaps in reality it’s just intended to slightly offset the points inflation we’ve seen in recent years.
Continue reading: New: Top Off Marriott Bonvoy Free Night Awards With 25K Points (Up From 15K)
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I guess it's better than nothing, but what Marriott really needs to do is increase the value of the free night awards to adjust to all the points inflation we've seen. At a minimum, the credit card 35k awards should go up to 40-45k.
I’ll certainly label this as good news, but considering the number of hotels I wanted to book that were priced at 101k points before (to keep me from topping off the 85k cents), I'll not be surprised if we see similar hotels inflate to 111k
Is this really good news? It likely means another round of devaluation is in the works.
@Lucky - unrelated, but have you seen some of the Flightradar24 data in the ME today? Flight tracks out of Dubai are showing some crazy routes leaping all over the place like a heart monitor e.g. UAE121 to Istanbul. Maybe someone is scrambling the data to protect flights?
35k FNCs need to be 50k. 50k FNCs need to be 65k. And, 85k FNCs need to be 100k.
Not only that but they should remove the top-up cap entirely; IHG doesn't have one.
Exactly this!
The 35k free night award should really be called the "Almost Free night award"
Laughable. They should remove the caps and/or follow Hilton's FNCs with certificates that cover any standard award. This is not a 'win' for consumers so much as 'saving face' for the recent devaluations.
Expect a lot of high-end properties that were listed for 101K, now to increase to 111K...
They've been spoofing now over the past week. Not new. Still, not 'great' because it's not going well over there.
I agree that this doesn't fully offset the devaluations/price inflation over the past couple of years. While Marriott points are generally worth more than IHG or Hilton points, I'd really like to see them increase points earning rates or raise the caps on how many points you can earn annually in bonus categories on their co-brand cards. That would go a longer way towards incentivizing people to engage with the loyalty program/spend on the cards IMO.
Lmao. Imagine collecting any hotel points. If you have no choice because of work, I get it. Still wouldn’t collect. Use them local weekend get seats.
This is great, instead of only being able to use my free night certificate for the Fairfield in Gallup, NM I'll be able to top it off enough to stay at a Fairfield in Las Cruces, NM or maybe even Albuquerque!
Great news because 35k is useless.
15k top off is still useless, not that 60k can get you anything good anymore.
Bad news because soon the devaluation would make 25k top off as useless as 35k.
This does help sometimes with my 85k certs. I just used one at solaz in Cabo but other nights were 2000 points over my 15k max top off. I am two player mode so now I can stay the extra night with 2nd cert.
I find that the most desirable properties price JUST outside of the cert + top off. For example, a 5* hotel i was looking at a couple weeks ago was 105k/night. I just checked again … 115k per night now.
As others have said, it is not about the fact of the Marriott redemption inflation, but is more about the value of the coupon. While the 25k extra is nice, the best value rewards are charging mostly just above that to avoid people from being able to use it which is why the value went down. This said, I do agree that the should not have a cap.