How To Use Marriott Bonvoy Nightly Upgrade Awards

In this post I wanted to take an in-depth look at Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards, which are a Bonvoy elite benefit that members have conflicting feelings about. Major changes have been made to this program as of 2024, as Suite Night Awards have been rebranded as Nightly Upgrade Awards, so let’s cover everything about how these work.

What are Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards?

Nightly Upgrade Awards (known as “NUAs”) are a way for Marriott Bonvoy Platinum, Titanium, and Ambassador members, to confirm a room upgrade up to three days before arrival. Each NUA is valid for one night of a stay.

While Platinum members and above receive unlimited suite upgrades subject to availability at check-in, this perk essentially allows members to prioritize upgrades on the stays that matter most to them. In other words, you may not care about a suite upgrade on your one night stay at an airport hotel, while you may care a lot about a suite upgrade on your annual vacation with your spouse.

But there’s a lot to understand about NUAs — how do you earn them, how do you redeem them, and what’s the best strategy for deciding when to redeem them? I’ll share my experience below.

Unfortunately don’t get too excited, because Marriott’s Nightly Upgrade Awards are nowhere near as useful as the Suite Upgrade Awards that World of Hyatt Globalist members receive as part of the Milestone Rewards program, each of which is valid for a suite upgrade at the time of booking for a stay of up to seven nights.

How to earn Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards

Marriott elite members exclusively receive NUAs as part of the Bonvoy Choice Benefits program. These are offered in two tiers, at 50 elite nights and 75 elite nights:

• When you pass 50 elite nights you can select five NUAs
• When you pass 75 elite nights you can select a further five NUAs

In other words, an elite member who earns 75 elite nights in a year can earn up to 10 NUAs. When you select NUAs as your Choice Benefits, they’ll be valid through the end of the year after they were chosen.

In other words, if you selected them as your Choice Benefit in July 2024, they’d be valid through December 31, 2025 (and you have to stay by then, rather than just needing to book by then).

Note that these Choice Benefits are tied exclusively to how many qualifying elite nights you earn in a year, rather than your status:

• If you participate in a Marriott status challenge (when one is being offered), you wouldn’t receive Choice Benefits unless you actually earn 50-75 elite nights in a year
• Several co-branded Marriott credit cards offer elite nights per year (up to 25), so the actual elite nights earned through credit cards would count toward Choice Benefits; if you had the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card (review) and Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card (review) you’d receive 40 elite nights annually, getting you 80% of the way to your first Choice Benefits
• Marriott Bonvoy lifetime elite members don’t receive Choice Benefits, unless they earn the required number of elite nights in a calendar year

How to redeem Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards

There are many nuances to understand when it comes to redeeming Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards. Marriott Bonvoy can be a complicated program, and that’s especially evident when it comes time to redeem NUAs.

Each Nightly Upgrade Award can be redeemed for an advance confirmable upgrade for select premium rooms and suites, with each NUA being valid for one night. Let’s go through some of the most common questions about Nightly Upgrade Awards, which might be the easiest way to understand this.

What rates are eligible for Marriott NUAs?

Any stay that would be considered “eligible” for the purposes of earning Bonvoy elite credits would also be eligible for Nightly Upgrade Awards. These can be redeemed on all stays booked directly with Marriott, including paid stays, points stays, free night certificate stays, Cash & Points stays, Marriott STARS rates, etc.

Stays booked through third parties, and other non-qualifying rates, generally wouldn’t be eligible for redeeming NUAs.

What hotels are eligible for Marriott NUAs?

Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards can’t be used for stays at the following brands:

• Ritz-Carlton Reserve
• Ritz-Carlton Destination Club
• Ritz-Carlton Residences
• Design Hotels
• Marriott Executive Apartments
• ExecuStay
• Marriott Vacation Club
• Marriott Grand Residence Club
• Vistana

It’s worth noting that as of 2024, these are finally redeemable at Ritz-Carlton and EDITION properties, so I’d consider that to be great news for those who like Marriott’s luxury portfolio.

NUAs also can’t be redeemed at select other individual properties not belonging to the groups listed above. If you want to see if a particular hotel is eligible, you can either contact Marriott Bonvoy customer service, or you can just make a booking and see if you have the option of applying an NUA to a reservation.

Unfortunately I’ve been finding that an increasing number of properties not belonging to the above brands aren’t eligible for NUAs, which sure is frustrating. Sometimes I’m not sure whether it’s an IT glitch or intentional, but I haven’t found a workaround.

What rooms are eligible for Marriott NUAs?

It’s up to individual hotels to designate which types of rooms are eligible for Nightly Upgrade Awards. According to the terms, this is supposed to include select premium rooms and standard suites, though you’ll find that this varies:

• At some hotels you’ll find that only one or two room types are available with NUAs, while at others you’ll find there are a dozen options
• At some hotels rooms eligible for NUAs don’t even include standard suites, but rather just premium rooms, while at other hotels you’ll find some absolutely incredible suites available with NUAs, like two bedroom suites, and suites that are 10x the price of an entry-level room

There’s a huge amount of variability here. When there are multiple rooms that are eligible for NUAs, you can select how many room types you want to request an upgrade to, in order to increase your odds — you could ask to be eligible for an upgrade to one type of room, a couple of types of rooms, or all the room types.

When can you request upgrades with Marriott NUAs?

You can request an upgrade with Nightly Upgrade Awards anytime between when you make your booking, and 2PM local hotel time the day before arrival. You can’t apply NUAs within 24 hours of arrival at a hotel.

When do Marriott NUAs clear?

Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards can clear as early as three days before arrival, and as late as 2PM local hotel time the day before arrival. Unfortunately there was a negative change here, because until 2023 they could clear up to five days out, but that window has been reduced to three days.

I’ll talk a bit more below about what clearing of upgrades is based on, but in my experience if they do clear, it’s often at the three day mark, rather than at the one day mark. If your upgrade clears, you should receive both an email and a push notification through the Marriott Bonvoy app (if you have that enabled).

Can you cancel upgrade requests with Marriott NUAs?

You can cancel Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards anytime when they haven’t yet cleared, whether that’s three months or three days before arrival. However, if your NUAs do clear, then you can only cancel the request if you cancel the reservation altogether, in which case the NUAs would be redeposited in your account.

You can’t cancel your NUAs once they’ve cleared if you still intend to complete the hotel stay.

Can you redeem Marriott NUAs for part of a stay?

You need to use NUAs for your entire stay, and can’t redeem for part of a stay. In other words, if you had five NUAs:

• You could book five one night stays
• You could book a two night stay and a three night stay
• You could book a five night stay
• However, you couldn’t book a six night stay, and then apply NUAs to just five of those nights (though you could always make two separate reservations)

Are Marriott NUAs guaranteed to clear if a room is available?

Should you expect that if a room you requested an NUA for is available three days out, that your upgrade will clear at that point? No, not quite, unfortunately:

• Nightly Upgrade Awards are cleared automatically based on an algorithm created by Marriott and the hotel; so while hotels can limit capacity for these upgrades, there’s not much “active” gaming going on, and also not much human intervention
• Nightly Upgrade Awards clearing are based on forecasted occupancy; if it looks like a hotel could sell that suite, it’s unlikely it will become available at the three day mark

You will find some inconsistency here. In my experience, if there are several of a specific room type available then it will also typically be available with an NUA three days out. Meanwhile, if there’s not much inventory, it might not clear.

Can a hotel downgrade you if you use a Marriott NUA?

If your Marriott NUA clears, can the hotel still downgrade you at check-in? The answer is supposed to be no. Nightly Upgrade Awards offer confirmed upgrades, and this means that once the upgrade is confirmed, it can’t be taken away.

Of course in some rare instances it’s possible a hotel may try to downgrade you — maybe the suite is out of service, maybe someone extended a stay, maybe there was a tech glitch, or maybe the hotel staff are just not very competent. Hotels aren’t supposed to do this, so I’d expect some compensation from the hotel if you do get downgraded.

How do you request an upgrade with Marriott NUAs?

After you confirm a reservation, there are two ways you can request an upgrade with an NUA:

• You can phone up Marriott Bonvoy customer support
• You can request an upgrade directly online

To do it online, go to the “My Trips” section of your Bonvoy account after booking, and log into your reservation by clicking the “View/Modify” button.

At the bottom of the reservation you should see an area that says “Use your Nightly Upgrade Awards,” and then click the “Start upgrade request” button.

Click that, and then you’ll see the options of which premium rooms you can select to request an upgrade to.

Note that you’ll only see the option for this functionality if you have enough upgrades in your account for the entire stay. If you do request an upgrade, the NUAs will be pulled from your account immediately, so you can’t apply them toward other reservations.

Obviously they would be returned to you if the upgrade doesn’t clear, but this is a consideration, since members have a limited number of NUAs, and may want to try using them toward multiple stays.

My Marriott Nightly Upgrade Award strategy

Given that Bonvoy elite members earn Nightly Upgrade Awards to cover only a small percentage of their stays, what’s the best strategy for deciding which stays to use these for? Here are my general considerations:

• How much does the stay matter to me? I care a lot more about an upgrade if I’m traveling with my family, if I’m at a resort where I plan on spending more time in the room, etc.
• What are the odds of getting a complimentary upgrade at check-in? As any Bonvoy elite member can attest to, some hotels are great about suite upgrades at check-in, while others aren’t. When deciding whether or not to apply an NUA, I ask myself what the odds are of getting an upgrade without using an NUA. This is based on my past experience at a property, how many suites the property has, and reading what others have said about the hotel online.
• How good of a premium room is available with an NUA? At some hotels you’ll only have larger guest rooms available with NUAs, while at other hotels you’ll have premium suites that you’d likely never get a complimentary upgrade to. If I’m going to use an NUA, I’d ideally like it to be for a really great room.

It’s important to approach all of this realistically, though. If you’re traveling somewhere in peak season that’s also frequented by lots of other Bonvoy elite members, you’re probably not going to have your NUA clear. In other words, Maui over Christmas? It’s almost certain you won’t get a suite upgrade, regardless of whether or not you apply an NUA.

Bottom line

Marriott elite nights members can earn up to 10 Nightly Upgrade Awards per year, each of which can be used to confirm a room upgrade at most three days out. This is a way to request upgrade priority on the stays that matter the most to you.

People have very different experiences with this, and I think it all comes down to managing expectations. While this perk isn’t nearly as useful as Hyatt’s program for suite upgrades, I’ve still gotten outsized value from this, and consistently select NUAs as my Choice Benefits.

What has your experience been with Marriott NUAs? Do you have any questions I haven’t addressed?