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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 great offer until April 3rd.
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.
Buy Marriott points with a 40% 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 140k Marriott Bonvoy points for $1250, or a $0.00893 a point.
$0.00893 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.
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 the price of 4. Let’s take a look at how buying points could save you tons of cash.
The Royal Hawaiian:
Two people could buy points and combine them to get a discount over the cash rate. If one person bought 140k miles and the other bought 73k miles you’d pay $1900 for 5 nights. Not cheap, but it’s Hawaii and a famed resort.
The same dates if booked with cash would be over $2800
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.
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