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During the coronavirus pandemic, hotel chains have been running offer after offer to sell you points. Since you aren’t paying them for hotel stays, they must reckon that they can still earn some revenue from selling points to be used in the future.

Marriott Bonvoy has been offering a 60% bonus when you buy or gift 2,000+ points. Although due to expire today, this promotion will now run until 15 July, 2020.

Since the regular price is 1.25 US cents per point, this bonus will bring your per point cost down to 0.78 cents. (0.64p)

Does it Make Sense?

As always, you can sometimes save money on hotel stays by buying points and immediately redeeming them for award nights. You are most likely to find bargains in low award categories (cheap using points) and high award categories (expensive, but potentially less than the retail rates). You will also receive the fifth night free if you can book your award stay in blocks of five nights.

As a reminder, this is Marriott’s award chart…

You can also convert 60,000 points into 25,000 miles. Buying 60,000 points would cost you $468 (£385). On a per mile basis, that works out to 1.54p. This would be a horrible price for Avios or Virgin miles, but is worth considering for small top ups of Alaska, Turkish, Cathay Pacific, etc.

Of course, with travel on pause, you might not be in the mood to book hotel stays or add to your mileage balance…

Don’t Forget to Try for Cashback

You might also be able to earn some cashback when buying Marriott points. Click here to reread this post on how it can be done…