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Even though a “category creep” devaluation is coming to Marriott Bonvoy on 4 March, 2020 – click here for details – you still might want to buy points to take advantage of current pricing. In that sense, therefore, Marriott’s latest promotion can make sense…
Between now and 25 March, 2020, you can receive a 50% bonus when buying at least 2,000 points. Since points normally cost $12.50 (£96) per 1,000 points, you would be reducing the price to 0.83 cents per point – 0.64p.
For the duration of this promotion, the annual cap on buying points has been raised to 100,000. Since the cap is “pre-bonus”, you can actually end up with 150,000 points.
Why Might You Want to Buy Points?
Converting to Miles
With Marriott Bonvoy, you can convert chunks of 60,000 points into 25,000 airline miles. If you were to buy 60,000 points, you’d pay $500. (£385)
On a per mile basis, you’d be paying 1.54p per mile.
Of course, that would be a horrible price for Avios or Virgin Atlantic miles. But 1.54p per mile is a quite reasonable price for miles from airline programmes such as: Alaska, Turkish, ANA, AA, United, etc. Many, but not all, of those programmes do sell miles directly as well, but you often need to buy hundreds of thousands in order to get the best price. Via Marriott, you can buy 25,000 mile chunks for those little top-ups you might need.
Moreover, you could buy points today and wait for an airline conversion bonus.
Hotel Stays
Joe has been running a series on Marriott sweetspot hotels.
For example, five nights at a Category 2 hotel could cost you as little as 40,000 points off-peak. Buying those points during March would cost you roughly $335 / £258. Or less than £52 per night…
Don’t Forget Cashback
When you buy points from any of the major airlines or hotel chains, the transaction is usually processed by Points dot com. And it just so happens that Points dot com is a vendor on the USA version of Topcashback.
So, if you buy Marriott points during the current promotion, you would receive an additional 2.5% cash rebate. You can quite easily pay out to a Paypal account. That said, my last couple of points purchases haven’t quite tracked properly – one of the eternal frustrations of dealing with cashback websites…
Nonetheless… if you wanted to be kind to one of your favourite bloggers, you could use my refer-a-friend link for the USA version of Topcashback.
https://www.topcashback.com/ref/member413556745309
The Bottom Line
A 50% bonus promotion makes Marriott points the cheapest they’ve ever been sold for. I certainly wouldn’t rush out to buy the maximum, but there are potentially some excellent uses of Marriott points. If you have a good idea of their potential use, then I would consider making a purchase during February / March…
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