We may receive a commission when you use our links. Monkey Miles has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Monkey Miles and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Monkey Miles is also a Senior Advisor to Bilt Rewards Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. We appreciate you using our links!!!

---

Buy Marriott Points

We have seen all sorts of deals this year when it comes to buying points throughout the pandemic. Marriott has a deal, which if used strategically, could be quite advantageous for future travel. I’m a big fan of purchasing any kind of point as long as you have a redemption in mind, and can save money by doing so.  With that said, Marriott has put forth a decent offer until September 15th. Remember that Marriott uses dynamic pricing so rates will heavily fluctuate from night to night.

Last year we saw a 30% discount as well as a 40 to 50% bonus so keep that in mind when assessing the value of this offer. We have seen lower prices in the past, but if you’re needing to make a booking ASAP and this makes it cheaper it could be a great fit for you. If not, it may be better to see if another option comes up later in the year.

Buy Marriott points with a 25% bonus

Normally I’m not a huge advocate of purchasing Marriott points because they traditionally limit the maximum per year to just 50k. Besides shoring up for an award night, there isn’t a lot of potential for arbitrage. Earlier this year, Marriott increased that max to 100k not including any bonus. With this offer, you could accumulate 125k Marriott Bonvoy points for $1250, or a penny a point.

$0.01 per point

This opens up a lot of potential in my mind to seize some great opportunities on high priced properties around the world. Particularly when you hit them during off peak and the point pricing is low comparative to the cash value. Be aware that we have seen points on sale with a 50% bonus in the past, knocking it down to $0.0083.

You can transfer between Marriott accounts

You can read all about it here, but this is the long and short

• If your account has activity in it…it has to be at least 30 days old to send or receive
• If there is no activity it has to be at least 90 days old
• You can TRANSFER a max of 100k points
• you can RECEIVE a max of 500k points

 

Where could this make sense?

5 nights in Hawaii

Hawaii is always a hot spot and if you can pop down in shoulder season you can get a pretty darn good deal. Remember, all Marriott members get a 5th night free, so you could stay 5 nights for 250k points. This could be a cool spot for you use those 5 nights offered by the Marriott Boundless. But…let’s take a look at how buying points could save you tons of cash.

 

 

1 person could buy 65k and another  people could buy 70k points and pool them to total a bit over 100k. A pretty decent savings really of $1687.50 compared to $2477.

 

A Maldives Honeymoon

Now remember that you can pool points. So let’s look out into the schedule at the St Regis Maldives.

The idea behind this would be for friends/relatives to be able to help fund your honeymoon via their accounts and a transfer into yours. Remember, you can only receive 100k from another account and 500k total in a year.

From 10/8/22 to 10/13/22

• Garden Villa = 340k points
• Beach Villa = 365k Points
• Overwater = 390k Points

The cash rates

• Garden = $1700
• Overwater = $2200
• Beach Villa = $2250

A Beach Villa would be just under $14000 for 5 nights.

You 100% do not want a garden villa. I had a PCR test in one and you may as well be anywhere in the world. If I were to go back I’d do an overwater or Beach Villa. Either are about the same price but let’s look at Beach Villa which costs 365k points for 5 nights. As you can see above it would cost you $14,635 ( although you’d still need to pay the $745 transport fee with points ) so you’re talking $13,890 for 5 nights.

Buying points would save you $10,000

You and two other people could buy points in the following amounts

• You could buy 100k points and get a 25k points bonus = 125k points
  • 
• 2 other people could do the same purchase 80k = 100k with the bonus points and transfer them into your account
• 1 person does 20k = 25k with the bonus
• In total this would cost you $3,750 and you’d get to stay here:

Couple of things to remember

• You need to have had a Marriott account for 30 days with activity
• If you have no activity…90 days
• It can take up to 7 days for the points to populate…

Overall

Certainly you need to crunch the numbers and make sure it works FOR YOU. But if you have that special redemption in mind this could be a way to make it work for much, much less.

Go here to Buy