Marriott Bonvoy & United MileagePlus Dual Accrual Promotion

Marriott Bonvoy and United MileagePlus have a partnership, offering some reciprocal perks and opportunities. The two programs have just launched a new promotion that incentivizes summer travel, available to select elite members of both programs. This isn’t the most exciting offer on earth, but if eligible, you might as well take advantage of it.

Earn bonus rewards with Marriott & United

This new promotion is available to Marriott Bonvoy Titanium and Ambassador members, and to United MileagePlus Premier Gold, Platinum, and 1K members. After registering for the promotion, members can earn Marriott Bonvoy points for United flights, and United MileagePlus miles for Marriott stays:

• Members can earn 750 bonus Marriott Bonvoy points for eligible United itineraries
• Members can earn 500 bonus United MileagePlus miles for eligible Marriott stays
• Members who complete both an eligible Marriott stay and eligible United itinerary will earn an additional one-time reward of 350 bonus Marriott Bonvoy points and 350 bonus United MileagePlus miles

To cover some of the basics:

• Registration is required between July 1 and August 31, 2024, and it’s fine if you booked your travel before registering
• Travel must also commence by August 31, 2024, meaning you need to have started your travel on United or completed at least one night of your Marriott hotel stay by then
• The above rewards are per eligible Marriott stay (not per night), and are per eligible United itinerary (not per flight)
• Only revenue travel qualifies, so hotel stays booked with points, or flights booked with miles, wouldn’t qualify
• Eligible members who are enrolled in the Marriott & United partnership can register at this link on Marriott’s website, or at this link on United’s website
• There’s no limit to how many bonus points and miles can be earned
• It can take up to six weeks after completing qualifying activity before bonus rewards will post
• Members are eligible to participate in only one dual currency campaign per calendar year; it remains to be seen if another one is offered this year, but I think it’s worth noting

My take on this Marriott & United promotion

It’s nice to see the increased partnership between Marriott and United. This is the second time that we’ve seen a dual accrual promotion between the programs (the last one was in late 2023), so this gives members access to extra rewards.

While more rewards are always a good thing, I can’t help but find the value of this promotion to be quite marginal, and wonder if it will do anything to move the needle in terms of consumer behavior. Personally I value Marriott Bonvoy points at 0.7 cents each, and United MileagePlus miles at 1.1 cents each. To crunch the numbers on that:

• The 750 Marriott Bonvoy points you get per United itinerary are worth ~$5.25
• The 500 United MileagePlus miles you get per Marriott stay are worth ~$5.50

I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but from a marketing standpoint, this just seems like giving something away for nothing, since I can’t imagine this will change consumer behavior, and cause people to give more business to Marriott and/or United that they would have otherwise.

Also, while promotions like this are often done as a way to share data between companies, that’s already happening between Marriott and United. So perhaps this is intended to increase sign-ups of the partnership between the two brands.

Bottom line

Marriott Bonvoy and United MileagePlus have a new dual accrual promotion for select elite members. With this, you can earn bonus Marriott Bonvoy points for United flights, and bonus United MileagePlus miles for Marriott stays. While this is better than nothing and you might as well take advantage of it, it’s not exactly the most exciting offer ever…

What do you make of this Marriott & United promotion?