Hello everyone! I’m probably 3 years behind on reviewing things but I really wanted to get this one done asap before I forget any details since there are probably people out there who are trying to decide between W Maldives and St. Regis Maldives and I hope this post will help. Prior to my stay, I couldn’t find very many thorough reviews on the W Maldives, which made it very difficult to choose between them for my stay during the small window of opportunity in August 2018 when overwater villas at both properties were booking at 340k points for 5 nights. Due to booking a ton of travel packages, I was just shy of being able to book both to decide later. I booked W Maldives first and unfortunately the opportunity passed before I had enough points to book St. Regis also. I wish I had booked both back to back and stayed at both. 😉
TagMarriott
Last week, Marriott announced even more category changes to their hotel list, effective March 5, 2019. Here’s the One Mile At A Time post about it with more information.
I wanted to quickly visualize the new categories on a map, so I took a few hours to throw this together. Caveat: Since I didn’t want to spend even more hours going over it, there might be a few mistakes and duplicates. Also, for some reason a lot of special characters turned out as gibberish that I couldn’t be bothered to fix. OCD doesn’t win today.
The Details
Marriott Rewards is actually two programs in disguise, offering rewards for both the standard set of Marriott branded properties as well as the hyper-luxurious Ritz Carlton portfolio. Because of this, it has fourteen separate categories for its hotels — nine for Marriott and five for Ritz Carlton. It’s award charts are as follows:
Like Hilton, Marriott hotels tend to be bunched up towards the middle to upper end of the category list, which means that the annual points purchasing limit starts to become a limitation for multi-night stays. Specifically, Marriott allows you to purchase up to 50,000 points per year for a price of 1.25 cents per point. This means that, unless you find a Category 5 and below hotel (which become fewer and fewer in number each year), you can only hope to get one night out of this hack. Here would be the costs of hotels in each category based on the purchase price of Marriott points (first half is for Marriott-branded hotels, and the second is for Ritz Carlton hotels):
| Marriott Category | Points | Total Cash |
| 1 | 7500 | $93.75 |
| 2 | 10000 | $125.00 |
| 3 | 15000 | $187.50 |
| 4 | 20000 | $250.00 |
| 5 | 25000 | $312.50 |
| 6 | 30000 | $375.00 |
| 7 | 35000 | $437.50 |
| 8 | 40000 | $500.00 |
| 9 | 45000 | $562.50 |
| Ritz Tier | Points | Total Cash |
| 1 | 30000 | $375.00 |
| 2 | 40000 | $500.00 |
| 3 | 50000 | $625.00 |
| 4 | 60000 | $750.00 |
| 5 | 70000 | $875.00 |
For the most part, except for at the very upper end of Marriott portion of the chart, you’re unlikely to beat the cash rate, especially once you factor in the points you would earn from rewards stays (Marriott typically has promotions that allow you to earn double points as well). Similarly, you might get lucky and find that the points cost of a hotel is discounted by 5,000 (Marriott calls these ‘Points Saver’ awards), but that typically means the cash rate is equivalently, if not more, discounted.
Thankfully, the situation will get somewhat better this year, as Marriott recently announced a revamped points and cash program. Previously, points and cash meant you could mix award nights with paid nights in a single reservation (which you can just do in any program by making separate reservations and calling the hotel and asking them to keep you in the same room), so there was no real opportunity for saving money. However, at some point this year, they will be switching to the points and cash model that we are familiar with from the other programs, offering rooms for a reduced points rate plus a cash co-pay. Here are the announced rates and the corresponding cash costs:
| Marriott Category | Points | Co-pay | Total Cash |
| 1 | 3000 | $45.00 | $82.50 |
| 2 | 5000 | $50.00 | $112.50 |
| 3 | 8000 | $55.00 | $155.00 |
| 4 | 11000 | $60.00 | $197.50 |
| 5 | 14000 | $65.00 | $240.00 |
| 6 | 17500 | $75.00 | $293.75 |
| 7 | 21000 | $90.00 | $352.50 |
| 8 | 24500 | $145.00 | $451.25 |
| 9 | 28000 | $220.00 | $570.00 |
| Ritz Tier | Points | Co-pay | Total Cash |
| 1 | 15000 | $115.00 | $302.50 |
| 2 | 20500 | $145.00 | $401.25 |
| 3 | 26000 | $170.00 | $495.00 |
| 4 | 32000 | $260.00 | $660.00 |
| 5 | 38000 | $335.00 | $810.00 |
While still not great, there is some potential for value in the middle of the points and cash award chart, which is the opposite of the standard award chart because of the price compression that happens there (with cash costs only increasing by $5 for the first few categories).
Unfortunately, those looking to stay at top-tier Marriott hotels (Category 9) are actually worse off with points and cash rates, modulo the advantage that they extend your points purchasing limit by 17,000. Similarly, top-tier Ritz Carlton hotels don’t offer much of a discount over the normal purchasing rate ($335 for 32,000 points for a Tier 5 Ritz Carlton works out to a bit more than a penny a point), but points and cash could still be worth doing for the $65 discount and the 32,000 points savings.
One more thing that I’ve left out until this point is that Marriott also offers the fifth night free on award bookings. Although you’re unlikely to be able to purchase enough points on your own for four nights at a hotel (you’re limited to Category 1 and 2 hotels, and the benefit doesn’t apply to points and cash bookings), Marriott allows members to transfer points to each other for a flat fee of $10 (see ‘points sharing’ here). So that’s worth keeping in mind, since it can offer another 20% savings over cash for longer stays and may tip the scales in favor of purchasing points (unlike Hilton, for which it’s generally unattainable).
An Example
By now, I’m pretty sure you can find single-night examples fairly easily, but here’s an example of a situation in which a single night redemption is not worthwhile, but a five-night redemption is. As a reminder, the new points and cash redemptions are not yet available, and Marriott has yet to announce a firm date for their rollout.
Let’s say you jumped on the Qatar Airways deal to South Africa that was going on yesterday and you needed to book a hotel. The African Pride Audacia Manor Boutique Hotel in Morningside, South Africa would normally run you $174/night or 15,000 points. Consulting our table above, we see it would cost $187.50 to buy those points, so we’re better off paying the cash rate.
However, when we extend our stay to five nights, the fifth night free bonus kicks in and reduces the points cost of the stay by 20%. Instead of 75,000 points for five nights, it costs only 60,000. The total cost to buy those points (plus the $10 for a friend to buy and transfer to your account) would be $760, whereas the cash cost for the five nights would have been $870. Good stuff!
Admittedly, the likelihood that you’ll both be looking for a five night stay AND it’s actually cheaper to use points than pay cash is very low, but I figured it would be useful to demonstrate another way to get value out of points bookings.
Happy hacking!
I got this offer in the mail recently:
The offer is is for 50,000 points + 5,000 points for adding an authorized user and having them make a purchase in the first 3 months + a $200 Marriott gift card for spending $3000 in the first 3 months. Annual fee of $85 is waived the first year.
Comparing to the other offers we have seen recently:
- 70,000 points + 7,500 points for authorized user + waived annual fee
- 80,000 points + 7,500 points for authorized user + annual fee of $85 not waived
If we compare this offer to the first offer, which I believe is a better offer than the second given the value of Marriott points, we are trading 20,500 (because we earn at least 2,000 points when using the $200 gift card) Marriott points for a $200 Marriott gift card.
Since I value Marriott points between 0.5 to 0.7 cents per point, we are trading $102.5-$143.5 for a $200 Marriott gift card + 2000 Marriott points when you spend the gift card (or none if you sell the gift card off.) Depending on your personal likelihood to pay for Marriott stays, this might actually be worth it!
The link to the application is at marriottrewards.com/giftcardoffer
However, via learn2churn on reddit, it appears that there are now publicly accessible links for the best of these offers, of which there are two variants:
- 80,000 points after $3000 spend plus 7,500 points for adding an authorized user. $85 annual fee is not waived. Link
- 70,000 points for the same spend plus 7,500 for an AU, but the annual fee is waived. Link
Unless you’re gunning for a Flight and Hotel package, option 2 is probably going to be the better option. Alternatively, if you have an immediate need for 10,000 points and are willing to pay .85 cents per point, then go for the 80,000 point offer instead.
Enjoy!
I already had $60,000 in credit spread across 9 credit cards (6 personal, 3 business) with Chase, and it had only been 3 months since I got both the Southwest Premier and Business Premier cards. However, since I am losing my Marriott Gold next year due to losing United Gold, and since the increased offer of 77,500 Marriott points was only available to Marriott Gold members and above, I figured I should apply now. Plus, I did want those points, and I have been staying in a number of Marriotts recently.
Unfortunately, when I applied, I received a message saying my application was pending. I hadn’t been denied any Chase cards yet, though I have gone through reconsideration phone calls a couple of times, so I prepared myself for another reconsideration phone call.
When I called in, I didn’t mention why I wanted the card, but just asked if Chase needed any more information to process the application. The representative asked to verify my income again, as well as asked how long I had been at my job. I also proactively offered to shift credit lines around or close old cards, as I knew I was probably already at the limit for Chase. Unfortunately, the representative was unwilling to budge, and stated that since I had applied for 15 credit cards this past year, Chase would not extend any more credit to me this year.
I was disheartened for a few days, but was willing to try to call again even though I hate reconsideration calls. Then I read a blog article that mentioned success with secure messaging Chase for reconsideration. The key takeaways were:
Update (9/19): Reddit is reporting three versions of the offer (targeted) depending on your Marriott status.
I was poking around last night at some Marriott hotels for a January trip to New Orleans (specifically, for a hotel I could BRG), and I stumbled upon the following Marriott Premier credit card offer during the booking flow:
Reward yourself with a $150 statement credit
Via Frequent Miler, the Marriott shopping portal appears to be offering 100 points/dollar spent at Fandango. Frequent Miler outlines the general value of such a deal (75% ‘off’ your movie tickets), but as the title of this post suggests, I’d like to take a different bent.
Before I go on, note that the terms don’t explicitly exclude gift cards, but they don’t explicitly include them either, so YMMV and only take on what risk you’re comfortable with:
Must successfully complete an online purchase of a movie ticket and display the ticket confirmation page to get reward.
Anyway, here’s the play:
I wanted to share my experiences so people can take advantage themselves. The process is not always simple, but with perseverance and attention to detail, you should be successful. Some 3rd party hotel booking websites also have best rate guarantee programs, such as Orbitz, but that will be a topic of a different post.
In order to take advantage of these guarantees, generally you must:
Find a better rate on a 3rd party site for the same hotel, dates, room type, number of rooms, number of people, currency, cancellation policy, etc. Basically, everything must match. Sometimes 3rd party websites will have minor differences in the room type name, or will say twin bed versus double bed, but if the room type is still obviously the same, I’ve found that it doesn’t matter.
- I’ve found tools such as TripAdvisor, Kayak, and trivago invaluable when finding better rates, as they compare rates from multiple 3rd party websites at once
Some details on whether a better rate qualifies or not:
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