Marriott Booking Tips
Good morning and happy spring!
I feel like I mostly talk about flights here, which is mostly because there are more opportunities for outsized points redemption with flights than there are with hotels, especially in Canada. That doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to say about hotels, though! This week, I want to give you some tips for Marriott, my most-used hotel program.
Reminder - Marriott Transfer Bonus
This week being about Marriott is rather timely, since the Amex-Marriott transfer bonus that I initially mentioned last month is ending soon. Until April 30 (Wednesday), you can transfer Amex points to Marriott with a 30% bonus, bringing the transfer ratio up to 1000:1560 (from the normal 1000:1200). In general, I don’t recommend transferring points speculatively, but if you have your eye on a redemption, now could be a good time to pad your Marriott balance.
Tip - Costco on Instacart
I like a good Costco deal as much as the next girl; who doesn’t want to save 50% on olive oil (or some Chipwiches) in this economy? But as a person with a 9-5 job, I’m pretty much limited to going on weekends, when navigating the parking lot is a headache and the warehouse is not much better. Costco also isn’t great for earning points on spending; they only take debit and Mastercard, and there aren’t any really impressive Mastercards available here these days. Even if the HSBC World Elite MC were still around, Costco usually codes as wholesale rather than grocery, meaning that you don’t get any category spending multipliers.
For me, Instacart is a solution to both of these problems. They do charge a bit more than the prices you’d see in the warehouse, but if you’re a Costco member, you can input your member number to get a bit of a discount (full disclosure: I don’t know warehouse prices well enough to know how they stack up against the eventual Instacart price). They also don’t necessarily have the same selection as your local warehouse might, but it’s good enough that, combined with the fact that someone will deliver it to my door, it’s usually worth it to me.
Plus, Instacart takes all major credit cards and codes as grocery, so if you pay with your Amex Cobalt, you’ll get the same 5x points you’d get at any other grocery store (side note: you can also order from Loblaws through Instacart if you’re desperate to both shop there and use your Amex to pay for it). Also, several Amex cards have repeatable Instacart offers, where you’ll get a statement credit for spending a certain amount. On my Cobalt, for example, the offer is $5 back on $10 spend, up to 12 times (total up to $60 statement credit). Again, not bad in this economy! If you’re a new Instacart user, you can use this link to join or apply code B883511153 at checkout for $10 off your first order (I’ll get a $10 credit as well - thank you!).
Now, I said above that Marriott is my most-used hotel program. This does not mean that it’s the program that I think provides the best value; that title goes to Hyatt by a mile. However, Canadians don’t really have a good way to earn Hyatt points besides staying in their hotels, and Hyatt also has the smallest global footprint of all the major hotel groups. Enter Marriott: points easy enough to earn in Canada, and it has the largest global footprint of the major chains.
Paying Cash for Marriott Stays
First, if you’re paying cash for your Marriott stay, don’t forget about their price match policy! Marriott guarantees that you’ll find the best rates by booking directly with them, so if you find a better rate elsewhere, they’ll match it and either give you an additional 25% off or credit your account with 5,000 points. Personally, I always take the discount unless I’d be saving less than $40 or so; in that case I would probably take the points. I’ve saved hundreds of dollars with this trick over the years; I would say I find a better rate on Hotel Tonight about 50% of the time.
Earning Marriott Points
The main ways to earn Marriott points are:
staying in their hotels (obviously),
spending on a Marriott co-branded Amex (the only hotel-branded credit card in Canada), or
transferring from Amex at a 1000:1200 ratio (as above, this ratio is elevated to 1000:1560 until April 30)
There are a few other niche things you can do to earn a few dozen points here and there, but I won’t get into that here.
Marriott Co-Branded Credit Cards
I want to take a quick minute before we get into spending Marriott points to talk about the two Marriott co-branded credit cards available to Canadians. They are both issued by American Express, and there’s a personal version and a small business version (fun fact: you do not need to have a full-fledged business to get a business credit card). Both cards give you 15 elite night credits, which grants you automatic Silver Elite status and puts you 10 nights away from Gold Elite. Sadly, the credits aren’t stackable, so if you hold both the personal and the business cards, you’ll still only get 15 night credits. Silver Elite status isn’t super valuable, and Gold isn’t all that valuable in North America, but Gold and above gets you a decent shot at an upgrade and late checkout outside NA.
The real value of the cards, though, is that starting on your card anniversary, you’ll receive a Free Night Award every year worth up to 35,000 points, and you can top up with your points to redeem for a stay costing up to 50,000 points. If you play your cards right, this can easily be worth more than the annual fee. If you hold both the personal and business cards, you do get both free night credits. However, if you’re thinking to yourself, “I need this card now,” I’d encourage you to wait a bit, as there is usually an elevated sign up bonus in the spring or summer (I expect it in the next month or so). I’ll let you know when it hits, and then you can hop on it!
Spending Marriott Points
The most obvious way to spend your Marriott points is on hotel stays. Unfortunately, Marriott does not publish an award chart, and their redemptions are priced dynamically, so there are a lot of pretty expensive points nights out there. However, if you can be a little flexible on your dates, you can often still find decent redemptions.
Marriott’s site is quite user-friendly, and makes it pretty easy to find good redemptions if you have flexible dates with their calendar search. Let’s say I want to book a hotel in Vienna in October. On the Marriott website, I simply type in Vienna as the destination, check off “Use Points/Awards,” and then when I go to put in the dates, I click “Flexible Dates” and select October.
The site will then take me to a page where I can select which hotel I want to check the prices for. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show sample rates on the initial page, which for those of us who are a bit more price-motivated is a drawback, but you can often tell from the photos and the brands which hotels will be more expensive (i.e. you can probably guess that the Ritz-Carlton will be more expensive than the Courtyard).
Once you select a hotel, you’ll be taken to a calendar view with prices on each date. Note that these prices are usually total for the number of nights that you’ve indicated, so in the example below, if I chose to stay the nights of October 25 and 26, I would pay 41,500 points total (a steal, by the way).
Note that if you’re booking through the Marriott app, the calendar view doesn’t show the prices; you have to click through to each date to find the price. Another benefit to booking on web vs on the app is that you’ll only find PointSavers rates on web; these are basically undisclosed sales that you can only discover by finding the rates on search. Last year, I lucked into a PointSavers rate when I needed a hotel for a night in Doha, which I was able to book for 18,400 points instead of the usual 23,000.
Also note that Marriott members can stay five nights for the price of four when booking on points. This means that, for example, if you’re staying somewhere that costs 30,000 points per night, you can stay five nights for just 120,000 points.
Finally, note that most points bookings are fully flexible, so if your stay decreases in price after you book it, you should be able to get the difference back. Just go in as if you’re looking to change your dates or room type, and select the same thing you had before (now at a new lower price) and you should get the difference refunded. Marriott will not alert you if the price decreases; you can either check it yourself periodically, or there are a few services that will check it for you.
So in summary:
Save money on stays by using price match
Earn points by staying, spending on co-branded cards, or transferring from Amex
Earn status and free night credits by holding co-branded cards
Redeem points by booking stays (on web for best price and features)
Stay 5 nights for the price of 4 on points
Get points back if the price drops after you book
I hope this will come in handy when you’re looking to book your next hotel stay! Let me know if you put any of these tips to the test. Have a great week.