I have booked a stay at Marriott. As I understand it I can have my Marriott rewards account award me MR points or RR points. The stay will yield 600 RR points or I would received 4000 MR points. which has a better redemption value, and am I missing any other ways to boost the reward outside of mattress hopping. To much trouble to bounce around DC with wife and 2 kids.
Stay is in May so I miss the mega bonus with MR.
toomanybooks
Apr 17, 12, 3:14 pm
In the most simple examples, Marriott points can be turned into WN points according to the following; you can do the math:
I have booked a stay at Marriott. As I understand it I can have my Marriott rewards account award me MR points or RR points. The stay will yield 600 RR points or I would received 4000 MR points. which has a better redemption value, and am I missing any other ways to boost the reward outside of mattress hopping. To much trouble to bounce around DC with wife and 2 kids.
Stay is in May so I miss the mega bonus with MR.
Well, 600 RR ponts value is easy to define: It's $10 towards WGA redemptions (but keep in mind that on redemptions you don't pay certain taxes, so it's a little beter than $10 toward WGA paid fares).
4000 MR points would theoritically transfer to 800 RR points, except that you can't transfer except in 10K:2K quantities, so until you earned more MR points, you wouldn't have the option of RR points.
You need to look at the redemption rates of some hotels you'd consider to see how much dollar value 4000 MR points used for hotel redemptions would be. (We can't do that for you without knowing what kind of places you would use them. Ie, the value of MR points is not portional to the cash value of the hotel, the way RR points are proportional to paid air fares. So the redemption value may be much higher at one hotel and much worse at another hotel (and it may further even depend on stay dates!).
Extrapolating, 40k MR points for hotels would be worth more than converting to RR points if you can get hotels that are well above $120/night for 40k (and if those are hotels you would actually want to stay at*).
*Beware of this trap in evaluating hotel point values: If you can use 40k points/night for a Marriott hotel that costs $200+/night, but nearby is a hotel of another brand that costs $85/night that you'd be just as happy to stay at, then it's not worth it, because you have to compare to the cost of the hotel you'd consider staying at (whether it's the one available on points or a nearby one). But if all of the hotels around there (that you'd consider) are $200+/night, then 40k/night is very much worth it (compared to converting to RR points).
Finally, you have to consider how many MR points you might accumulate before you redeem. There are some special "hotel + air" packages avialable for higher redemption levels that may be the very best value if you can make use of them (but they only work with certain-length stays, etc). If you were able to accumulate then use these, then the value would tilt even more in the MR points direction. (But I did not factor this option in in the previous paragraphs.)
aviator8
Apr 17, 12, 5:57 pm
Thank you for the detailed reply! I am leaning toward taking MR points. I don't have many (in any hotel program) and need to build them so that I can take vacations without paying for lodging. I's build some up with CC offers over time, but I may as well just build mt MR balance with this stay.
leeinct
Apr 19, 12, 12:26 pm
...but, if you registered for the Megamiles Marriott promo, it becomes a no brainer to go with miles vs points.
aviator8
Apr 19, 12, 12:37 pm
...but, if you registered for the Megamiles Marriott promo, it becomes a no brainer to go with miles vs points.
i am staying on dates outside the promotion. Already checked that one.
pinniped
Apr 19, 12, 1:01 pm
1 RR point = a relatively fixed amount in the 1.6-1.7 cpp range.
1 MR point = varies somewhat, but the value per point increases as you get more points. Since I stay at Marriotts and reach the Travel Package levels, I value 1 MR point at about 1.2-1.3 cpp.
Therefore, 4000 MR is worth a lot more to me than 600 RR. The only times I've signed up for Megamiles promotions in the past have been when I'm doing short, cheap stays and it's something like 2k-5k miles per stay vs. maybe 1500-2000 MR points.
The catch of course is that 4000 MR alone is worthless. You have to decide whether you're committed to Marriott since the main way MR points are earned is through actual hotel stays. There aren't good transfer-in options from other programs and the credit card is designed for spending at the hotels themselves.
sdsearch
Apr 19, 12, 7:58 pm
the credit card is designed for spending at the hotels themselves.
Well, the Chase Marriott Premier Visa:
does earn the most at Marriott program hotels (5 points/$), but it does earn extra (2 points/$) at restaurants and (any) airlines and car rentals. It's the only card I have that earns extra in those categories, so I've started using it for many of my restaurant purchases, airline purchases from airlines whose card I don't have, and car rentals where I don't need the card to provide collision coverage (which is few of those, actually).
But the other thing that card is designed for is international use, since it has 0% forex. So unless you have another card iwth 0% forex, it's an ideal card for just about anything overseas (that you can pay for with a swipe card -- unfortunately there's no EMV "global chip" version of it yet).
does earn the most at Marriott program hotels (5 points/$), but it does earn extra (2 points/$) at restaurants and (any) airlines and car rentals. It's the only card I have that earns extra in those categories, so I've started using it for many of my restaurant purchases, airline purchases from airlines whose card I don't have, and car rentals where I don't need the card to provide collision coverage (which is few of those, actually).
I still value 1 SPG > 2 MR. By a wide margin...
But the other thing that card is designed for is international use, since it has 0% forex. So unless you have another card iwth 0% forex, it's an ideal card for just about anything overseas (that you can pay for with a swipe card -- unfortunately there's no EMV "global chip" version of it yet).
I also value 1.25 Avios > 2 MR. This one's a little closer since the use of Avios for someone from the U.S. is highly focused on short-haul AA routes. (Star Alliance or perhaps just AAdvantage is superior for anything long-haul.)
However, one could argue that if I was diligent about carrying all of my cards to use with all of their special categories (and I have several Chase cards that are like this), I should use MR at the right time to effectively earn 2 Avios per dollar via the Travel Packages. I mean, eventually, those 2 incremental MR become two incremental Avios (sort of), if that's the program I want to convert to. I just don't do enough of the enhanced spending to make it a terribly important decision, so I usually leave a lot of credit cards in a drawer.
sdsearch
Apr 26, 12, 5:50 pm
I also value 1.25 Avios > 2 MR. This one's a little closer since the use of Avios for someone from the U.S. is highly focused on short-haul AA routes. (Star Alliance or perhaps just AAdvantage is superior for anything long-haul.)
Only on non-stop short-haul AA routes! (Because Avios redemptions are by segment. By the time you redeem for two segments, you've gained nothing, and maybe even lost, compared to AA miles redemption.) How many of those do you have to choose from being based in MCI (that's where your profile implies you're based)?
I know for LAX-MCI nonstop I have to use WN, since AA doesn't fly nonstop there. So if AA won't fly nonstop LAX-MCI, i doubt they fly nonstop from MCI to much beyond DFW and ORD, do they? Just how often do you need award trips to those two specific cities? :confused:
Even with somewhat more non-stop AA destinations from LAX (where I'm based), I still rarely find need for Avios, so the 100k I earned from the getting the BA card once (a couple years ago) then dropping it will last me many years. I thus don't find anywhere near enough value in incremental Avios points (over the unused ones I already have) to justify paying the annual fee each year for the BA card. So to me it's irrelevant what Avios points are worth (until I drain my supply, which is actually 230k+ from collecting for 9 years without a single burn since 2003).
Meanwhile, I assume there are places in the world where Marriott's are the only points-based hotels (though I'm not sure where yet), since I've found that pattern for pretty much every other hotel program (but a different hotel program in each place). So I feel the need for more diversity in hotel points than in airline miles (where 4 airlines in 3 alliances, plus 1 airline -- WN -- in no alliance, is enough collecting for me).
I don't need miles anywhere enough to hold more than one annual fee card except where there's a complete offset to the annual fee (every year). The Marriott and Priority Club cards each have that with a free night cert every year you pay the annual fee. The Citi AA cards have that with perennial retention offers that credit the annual for doing just a handful of (they don't care how big) purchases over a few months.
But I'm not aware of reliable retention offers on the BA card that completely offset the annual fee, so I'm not interested in making that be my choice of 0% forex card. (Besides, I stay at Marriott hotels a lot, and the 5 points/$ there does make sense there compared to a non-Marriott card, no?)