The question here is if Gold is worth busting a gut to put 8 more nights Marriotts way before the end of the year.

Undoubtably the answer to this depends on the stay pattern.

1. The main guaranteed bennie of Gold is the Lounge access bringing with it free continental breakfast, though only on weekdays. Alas this is only available at FS hotels, so if OP only does CY and FI there's probably little real chance of this being worth much.

2. The other guaranteed Gold bennie is worth very little, an extra 1/2 point per $, yes thats right, an extra 1/2 point!! So if you stay 50 nights averaging $100 night as silver you'll receive 60,000 points. Your gold status will garner you 2500 extra. It cant be worth putting those extra 8 nights MR way for such scant reward.

3. The final "guaranteed" benefit is the BOGOF. I place this bennie in quotation marks as whilst it used to be the MAJOR gold bennie it has now been so watered down that its almost worthless, and for the last 3 months of the year is totally worthless as its been suspended. Latest indications are the BOGOF may return in March 2012. In years past I have made good use of the BOGOF's making savings of several hundred $$$ per year. In fact this year I did manage to make use of 1 BOGOF, but as that was in London, it was a great offer. The BOGOF (aka EEO) could be worth the effort on its own, if its rumoured return does occur next year and if its genuine.

4. Room upgrades are the other benefit but are not guaranteed. In reality my experience has been very strong on room upgrades both as Gold and Plat, though these have been mainly "soft" upgrades (corner rooms, larger rooms) and in my experience are far more likely in Europe than in USA.

5. Discretionary extras. Although not formally a part of the scheme my experience, in the UK and EU has been almost universal offerings of full free breakfast at weekends, with free drinks (once) and even a free minibar (again, once, but that was during a week award stay, so I made good use of it). The value of these alone make qualification worthwhile, however you do need to be in Europe to really see that.

In summary therefore, the lounge access is worthless to a FI or CY regular, but worthwhile if you stay mainly FS. BOGOF can be great, but are being overhauled and its not easy to foresee their future worth. The room upgrades aren't much but do ensure dumpster free views, and sometimes can be a real treat. The discretionary extras can be fab, but are far more miss than hit. The extra points are derisory!

As they say, the choice is yours...