Hotels

You can now add 15k points to your Marriott Free Night Certificates

a tall building with trees in front of it

We may receive a commission when you use our links. Monkey Miles is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com and CardRatings. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. 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.


Add 15k points to your Marriott Free Night Certificates

Marriott now allows you to add 15k points to your free night certificates. While this is a great new perk, IHG allows you to do the same thing to their 40k free night certificates without any cap ( meaning you could use a 40k cert and throw 60k on top of it to stay at the Six Senses Maldives like I did for my honeymoon ).

Marriott currently has 3 Free Night Certificates it regularly offers

  • 35k found on the Boundless and Bonvoy Business
  • 40k Annual Choice when you hit 75 elite nights
  • 50k issued on the Amex Bonvoy Brilliant
    • This is also issued as a promotional welcome offer periodically ( we did this 2 years ago on the Boundless for 5, 50k nights )
  • 85k issued typically as promotional welcome offers on cards

They will populate your account and look like this:

a white rectangular sign with black text

I recently stayed at the New York Edition for 50k points

Unfortunately, when I stayed we couldn’t use our free night certificate since it was static at 35k and you couldn’t add points to it. With that said, it’s a gorgeous property and I’d definitely stay again with the new top up feature.

a screenshot of a hotel

Now when I go to book I’m given the following option after hitting View Rates and selecting a room. a screenshot of a computer

This certainly makes the free night certificates more valuable after the recent dynamic award pricing model Marriott implemented which saw a ton of properties skyrocket in cost.

a room with a bed and a table and a tv

Overall

Marriott made their points a lot less valuable when they went fully dynamic and stripped their award chart completely. Unfortunately this is the direction we’re seeing all programs take, but this improves the value of the free night certificates. I’d like to see them follow in the footsteps of IHG and make the amount you can add unlimited, but it’s at least something. With Dynamic pricing you’ll often times see properties price just above the 35k, 50k, or 85k levels meaning the cert is unusable without the ability to top-up.

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

a blue credit card with lines and symbols

Learn More

 Affiliate link 

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


4.8
4.8/5
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott.

Welcome Offer

60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months

Annual Fee

$95

Points Earned

Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards

  • 3x on dining
    •  including eligible delivery services for takeout
  • 3x on select streaming services
  • 3x on online grocery purchases
    • (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
  • 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel Portal
  • 2x on all other travel
  • $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Chase Travel
    • The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
  • 10% Anniversary Bonus
    • Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
  • Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
  • Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
  • Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
    • Primary rental car coverage is my favorite

We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.

Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.

Main Cast: 

Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.

Supporting Cast:

Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on. 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.

If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners

Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

1 Comment

  • Ivan May 5, 2022

    Hello Zach & Miles, do you recommend the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Visa with its current 150K points @ $95 fee???

Leave a Reply to Ivan Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.