Link: Apply now for the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card
The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card (review) is the most premium credit card in the Marriott co-brand card portfolio. The card has a hefty annual fee that might make some people hesitant to apply, but the perks add up.
In this post, I want to share why I think this card is worth picking up, as the benefits justify the annual fee, in my opinion.
In this post:
Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card welcome offer
At the moment, the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card has an improved welcome offer where you can earn 185,000 Bonvoy bonus points after spending $6,000 within the first six months. This is among the best offers that we’ve seen on the card.
I value Bonvoy points at 0.7 cents each, given all the great ways there are to redeem them, so I would value 185,000 points at $1,295.
Why the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card is worth it
The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card has a $650 annual fee (Rates & Fees). I can understand how on the surface some people might say “well I don’t want to pay that much for a card if I don’t have to.”
I totally get it, but I think for many people this card will be well worth it. It’s a card that I personally have, and one that I get significant value from. In no particular order, below are the five perks that I like most about the card, and that I think make it worthwhile.
$300 annual restaurant credit
One thing that helps with justifying the annual fee on the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card is that it offers up to $300 in restaurant credits annually. Specifically, you can receive up to $25 per month in credits for spending at eligible restaurants worldwide.
This should be extremely easy to take advantage of — just spend $25 at a restaurant each month, and you’ll receive a statement credit for that amount. You could use this toward a nice dinner while traveling, or just for your morning coffee. There’s no registration required, and the statement credit will post automatically.
Admittedly there are better cards for dining spending, so you may not want to use this card for all of your restaurant spending. My strategy is to just load $25 into my Starbucks account at the beginning of each month, and that does the trick.
Free night award worth up to 85,000 Bonvoy points
The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card offers a free night award on your account anniversary every year, valid at a property costing up to 85,000 Bonvoy points per night. This has a significant advantage over the free night award on some other Marriott credit cards, which are only valid at properties costing up to 35,000-50,000 points.
You can even use up to 15,000 points to top off your free night award, meaning you could use the certificate at a hotel costing up to 100,000 points. You could potentially use that at some pretty awesome hotels.
Personally, I value this free night certificate at more than $350 per year, so between the restaurant credit and this, you’re already breaking even on the card on an ongoing basis, not even accounting for the other perks.
Just to give an example, I used one of my last free night awards at the Ritz-Carlton Kyoto. The property was charging 100,000 points for the night I wanted to stay, so I could use the free night award, plus top it off with 15,000 points. If paying cash, the room would have cost over $2,000. What a deal!
Marriott Platinum Elite status
The single greatest benefit of the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card is that it offers Platinum Elite status for as long as you’re a cardmember. This is amazing, as it ordinarily requires 50 elite nights per year. This is where hotel status gets valuable, and you can unlock perks like free breakfast, suite upgrades, guaranteed late check-out, and more.
Note that the years of Platinum Elite status earned with this card also count toward lifetime status with Marriott Bonvoy, if that’s something you’re going for.
25 elite nights toward Bonvoy status
The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card offers 25 elite nights toward status annually. Since I have the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card and the Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card (review), I receive a total of 40 elite nights toward status annually between the two cards.
Now, of course you’re already getting Platinum Elite status with the card, so what’s the benefit of this? Well, the elite nights could come in handy if you want to earn Marriott Bonvoy Choice Benefits (like Nightly Upgrade Awards) or go for Marriott Titanium Elite or Marriott Bonvoy Ambassador Elite status.
A Priority Pass™ Select membership
The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card offers a Priority Pass™ Select membership (Enrollment required) to the primary cardmember. This will come in handy for anyone who travels by air with any frequency.
Bottom line
I find the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card to be extremely worthwhile. While the card has a $650 annual fee, personally, I tend to think the $300 annual restaurant credit plus annual free night award more than justify the annual fee.
Then you can add in perks like Platinum Elite status, 25 elite nights toward status annually, and more, and the card really shines.
If you have the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card, what has your experience been?
The following links will direct you to the rates and fees for mentioned American Express Cards. These include: Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card (Rates & Fees).
Top tips:
$25 a month restaurant credits works with Starbucks reloads, so worse case you just do that every month if you even occasionally visit sbux.
Los Vegas hotels still works with 200$ resort credits , wait a few weeks then cancel. Fees are not clawed back. YMMV.
My Brilliant is up for renewal this month and I intend to cancel. Having had the experience with multiple stays of properties not honoring Platinum benefits (especially guaranteed late checkout), and/or offering substandard "free breakfast", continuous mile devaluation, and free night pricing frequently coming in at 101,000 miles (rendering these certificates useless for those stays), I'm not interested in maintaining this relationship unless/until Marriott begins to enforce the provision of promised benefits, and/or Amex hold...
My Brilliant is up for renewal this month and I intend to cancel. Having had the experience with multiple stays of properties not honoring Platinum benefits (especially guaranteed late checkout), and/or offering substandard "free breakfast", continuous mile devaluation, and free night pricing frequently coming in at 101,000 miles (rendering these certificates useless for those stays), I'm not interested in maintaining this relationship unless/until Marriott begins to enforce the provision of promised benefits, and/or Amex hold their co brand partners accountable to deliver on benefits that Amex advertises to sell their cards.
Could you please tell where and when benefits weren’t given and when you could not use the FMC, please?
Thank you
You wrote: "Then you can add in perks like Platinum Elite status, 25 elite nights toward status annually..."
I have never, but have been trying to understand this. Can you assist me:
If the card grants you Platinum status plus 25 nights, doesn't this mean you are already at Titanium?
Or does it mean: you need 75 nights to get to Titanium. We are granting you 25 but you still need 50 more nights despite your Platinum status.
25 nights only but automatic Platinum status annually. Would need to earn 50 more nights for Titanium
@Will
Thank you much for clearing this up for me.
Y no coverage of the Aeroplan changes? This card is old news, but Aeroplan changes are yuuuuge
While you're using the $300 restaurant credit in full (assuming no breakage), it's money that you prepaid via the AF. I'd say this card is worth it if you want/need the status. It helped me complete the required 600 nights for lifetime platinum. Now that I have that, this card is not worth the annual fee for me.
I am thinking along these lines as well -- quit in a couple years once I have lifetime Platinum. My restaurant breakage is close to 100% because I never think about it (always just use AmEx Gold for the return as second-nature / default on ApplePay) and never pull this card unless I'm staying at a Marriott.
Sorry to harp. Let’s assume the $300 dining is cash equivalent (it isn’t but let’s assume). So you pay $350 for an 85K certificate. What would you rather have… one shot per year to go ham at a nice Marriott or $350 to spend for a nice hotel (doesn’t have to be Marriott, could use a AAA rate, could be a Hyatt, could be two nights, get to earn points on the spend, etc etc etc). This isn’t really a close one.
You’re right it’s not close I’m taking the 85k cert every time
Same. To each their own, but for me $350/night hotels in places I want to stay at times I want to visit are few and far between. $300 seems to be the floor for a non-crappy/4* hotel in most US cities at most times of the year, based on my business travel, even with our discounts. My work travel -- which is certainly not at St Regis/equivalents - probably averages closer to $400/night, more in NYC/London/etc.
Harold, I think his point was the opposite, i.e. that the 85K certificate is not worth $350, presumably because he would never spend that much on a hotel anyway.
I look at these deals in terms of what it would save me purely in cash terms..
If I have to jump through hoops annually to get back my $650 worth of value then it's not worthwhile to me.
I question how far one 85K certificate takes you per year. No one goes to Kyoto for a quick one nighter
I struggle with it since I have both this and the Ritz card and I am LT Titanium so virtually all of the other benefits don't apply. However, we are close enough to NYC to make it an overnight trip. I have used the cert at the Ritz Central Park ($1925 a night) and the St. Regis ($1550 a night) as well as the Marquis in midtown just before Christmas ($925 a night). I have...
I struggle with it since I have both this and the Ritz card and I am LT Titanium so virtually all of the other benefits don't apply. However, we are close enough to NYC to make it an overnight trip. I have used the cert at the Ritz Central Park ($1925 a night) and the St. Regis ($1550 a night) as well as the Marquis in midtown just before Christmas ($925 a night). I have upcoming reservations at the Ritz NoMad and the JW Essex (both going for in excess of $1300 a night). Would I normally pay this myself--absolutely not--but most people are paying these rates at these hotels. It gives me a chance to try places I'd never pay for myself. As long as I am getting at least a $350 in value per room, I am OK, and most times I get much, much more (even with the up to 15k points topup).
We've gotten good mileage out of this too. I accompanied my HS-aged son to NYC for a college summer program last summer and stayed at the St Regis for a night, which was great -- even used the chauffeur to take me to dinner. My wife also has the card, so we've combined to do two nights at Mauna Kei and on the mountain in Snowmass when rooms were insane during our school's February break...
We've gotten good mileage out of this too. I accompanied my HS-aged son to NYC for a college summer program last summer and stayed at the St Regis for a night, which was great -- even used the chauffeur to take me to dinner. My wife also has the card, so we've combined to do two nights at Mauna Kei and on the mountain in Snowmass when rooms were insane during our school's February break earlier this year. OTOH, the 50k certificate on the lower card would, I think, be near worthless to us with the way redemptions are priced now.
I should have added (to your point about not visiting Kyoto for a night): these redemptions were all add-ons where we had other lodging for remaining days of longer vacations. We actually did this *in Kyoto* in 2018 -- we stayed at a traditional Ryoken for two nights and at the Ritz for two (and this was part of a longer Japan trip, for which we also used Bonvoy points on the Tokyo Ritz, among...
I should have added (to your point about not visiting Kyoto for a night): these redemptions were all add-ons where we had other lodging for remaining days of longer vacations. We actually did this *in Kyoto* in 2018 -- we stayed at a traditional Ryoken for two nights and at the Ritz for two (and this was part of a longer Japan trip, for which we also used Bonvoy points on the Tokyo Ritz, among other stops. Side note: the Tokyo Ritz transferred all of our luggage directly to the Kyoto Ritz and unpacked for us before we arrived -- for free.).
In NYC, I stayed with my son in a less fancy but still nice IHG property downtown until dropping him off (and then soloing to the St Regis -- he'll be better for being less spoiled). On the Big Island, we stayed at various parts of the island over 10 days, mostly in Airbnb/VRBO houses and just finished with two nights at the resort. And in Snowmass, we have relatives in town who had other guests for the first two days, so we needed a place to stay then. Come to think of it, we also stayed two nights at the Aspen St Regis on redemptions when we had a wedding to attend. I'm convincing myself this card is worthwhile even though I have never remembered to put any restaurant spend on it.
used it at the miami beach RC many times. $700+/night. used in in LA, the SLS, edition. many places.
RC card is miles better:
- 85k certs are a wash
- $300 airline credit is much better than $25 per month restaurant as its much less hassle. I've used for UA Travelbank and first class upgrades on DL/AA
- all for $200 lower annual fee
If you are paying for a premium marriott card you're probably getting plat anyway naturally so automatic plat on brilliant is whatever
@Harold:
If "RC" referrs to the Ritz Carlton card, is that not closed to new applicants since 2018? I know there are reports of people "switching" to the RC card, but that is not a guarantee you will get it (gotta have at least $10,000 minimum credit limit), and you have to have an existing Marriott Chase card for at least a year before you can even request to switch to the "RC" card....
@Harold:
If "RC" referrs to the Ritz Carlton card, is that not closed to new applicants since 2018? I know there are reports of people "switching" to the RC card, but that is not a guarantee you will get it (gotta have at least $10,000 minimum credit limit), and you have to have an existing Marriott Chase card for at least a year before you can even request to switch to the "RC" card. For those of us that have not had either this card or the "RC" card, it is a good gateway to enter the platinum marriott world. And this card gives platinum status, where the RC card only gives Gold, if I am not mistaken. Can't see how the "RC card is miles better."
The breakfast and lounge benefits from the Brilliant has served us well.