I’m still shaking my head that I somehow missed the news that you can now top up your Marriott free night award certificates by adding up to 15,000 points to secure a more expensive property.
Top Up Your Marriott Free Night Award Certificate By Adding Up to 15,000 Points
Earlier this week I wrote about my decision to spend a quick overnight layover in Paris at the Marriott CDG Airport Hotel, which was 32,000 points per night. I chose that property because I had an expiring 35K certificate and, at the time, I thought my choice was to get this property for free or pay over 400USD to stay at the Sheraton inside the airport, because it cost 44,000 points per night.
What I missed was a policy change made in 2022 that you can now combine points with the value of the free night certificate:
Additionally, the value of your Free Night Award can be combined with up to 15,000 points.
I could have saved myself an immense amount of stress nad time by adding 9,000 Bonvoy points to the 35K certificate to stay at the in-terminal Sheraton CDG.
So yes, I feel like a fool, though now I know.
I like this policy quite a bit and appreciate it. How I wish I would have just been aware of it a little earlier…
image: Marriott
Uhhh, this has been policy for much longer than just earlier this year. It started in 2022. It is very useful, but not as much as IHG’s policy with their Flex FNCs, which allow you to add any amount to the 40K certificate point value.
Unrelated is that you didn’t miss much by skipping the CDG Sheraton. Yes, the convenience of being able to walk there from the terminal is nice, but when I stayed there last, in 2022, it was quite rundown.
This isn’t that recent a change; it has actually been in effect since early 2022.
Agree with the above on all points. Personally, I find this option useless and frustrating for Marriott stays: I never have any interest in their low-end properties, so my annual free night certificate almost always goes to waste, unused. I have found plenty of appealing Marriott properties where I wold want to stay, but all of them would have required 18,000 to 30,000 points for the free night cert to be topped-off….which they won’t allow. It’s stupid and annoying as hell.
OTO, IHG’s program allows you to throw as many points as you want when topping off a FNC, which is how it should be. I stay at IHG properties often because of this. Marriott’s Bonvoy program sucks.
Yeah this has been a policy for awhile now. But the number of hotel nights priced between 51k and 55k have also increased for some strange reason…
Was 44K for me…oh how I wish I had known this.
As a long long time titanium member, I agree with Pete. It’s a joke. What happens when the room cost less than 40,000 points? Why can’t it be combined with other points to get more room nights? Not member friendly at all
I am going to take this as “even the experts who have been in the game for a long period of time learn something new.” Glad you found this out, though I’m not sure if this will change your strategy going forward. I’ve found the change very useful for my part, even if I find the prices for the hotels themselves have overall increased.
Some of us get an 85,000 coupon for free night from the Chase Ritz Carlton Card. Adding 15k points allows a 100,000-point stay – which can be extremely valuable and easily makes the annual fee for the card worthwhile. I can get a $1500 room for those points.
Note: If you want the Ritz Carlton Card, supposedly you can start with the base Bonvoy credit card and call customer service to get upgraded but cannot verify this is true.
With the $300 annual travel credit (only add-ons, not for the ticket itself) and unlimited authorized additional card members and Chase Sapphire Lounge access, in my opinion this is now one of the best credit cards on the market.
Yes indeed – and plan to use the 85K night for the St. Regis NYC next year.
you should read frequent miler they’re good at stuff like this