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.
In this post:
Marriott expands free night award top off feature
In early 2022, Marriott Bonvoy rolled out a new functionality, whereby free night awards could be topped off with up to 15,000 points per night to stay at a more expensive property (compared to not being able to top them off at all). In other words, if you have a free night certificate valid at a property costing up to 50,000 points, you could redeem the certificate plus 15,000 points for a stay at a property costing 65,000 points.
There’s now an update — as of March 12, 2026, Marriott Bonvoy members are able to top off free night awards with up to 25,000 points, so that’s a 67% increase in terms of the number of points with which free night awards can be topped off.
To cover the basics:
- This is valid for all free night awards, including those issued through co-brand credit cards, promotions, and program benefits, such as Choice Benefits
- Members have the flexibility to add points to each eligible free night award, including those used to book a multi-night stay, and this can be done during the booking process
- Members can still apply nightly upgrade awards on these reservations
- Should a member choose to modify a reservation in any way, it may impact the points needed to redeem for the stay
This is a positive change, but it’s hard to get too excited
I don’t want to be negative about an improvement, as it’s nice to see some added flexibility for these certificates. However, as anyone who is engaged in the Marriott Bonvoy program can attest to, being able to top off free night awards with 10,000 more points than before doesn’t even keep up with inflation.
Nowadays Marriott Bonvoy’s top properties sometimes retail for over 200,000 points per night, so even with a top off, a certificate could still be a long way off from securing a room at many properties. It sure would be nice if Marriott didn’t cap the extent to which these free night awards could be topped off… after all, members have to earn those points through engagement anyway!
Hotel loyalty programs seem divided on free night award flexibility:
- Hilton Honors free night awards all don’t have category caps, and can be redeemed at nearly all properties
- IHG One Rewards free night awards can be topped off with an unlimited number of points
- World of Hyatt free night awards can’t be topped off with points
Bottom line
It’s now possible to top off Marriott Bonvoy free night awards with up to 25,000 Bonvoy points to redeem at more expensive properties, an increase from the previous policy of being able to redeem up to 15,000 additional points.
This means certificates worth 35,000 points can now be redeemed at properties costing up to 60,000 points, certificates worth 50,000 points can now be redeemed at properties costing up to 75,000 points, and 85,000 point certificates can be redeemed at properties pricing up to 110,000 points.
What do you make of Marriott Bonvoy’s expanded points top off feature?
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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.
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.
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.
@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?
They've been spoofing now over the past week. Not new. Still, not 'great' because it's not going well over there.
Cheers mate
Is this really good news? It likely means another round of devaluation is in the works.
Expect a lot of high-end properties that were listed for 101K, now to increase to 111K...
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
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.
Agreed. A 35k award is basically an airport hotel at this stage
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"