Originally Posted by travelinfoo

there's NO 5th night free on cash bookings.

There's a current resort promo for 5th night free on cash booking but that's solely on resorts & is a limited time offer.

The 5th night free on awards is what replaced the GLONs.

Originally Posted by pinniped

There is no programmatic 5th night free on regular paid stays.

Sometimes when you price a long-ish stay, you'll get a lower nightly rate...sometimes not. Sometimes you have to play around with it: price the weekend nights separately from the weekday nights. Many times a property will have an "Nth night free" promo code, but sometimes that simply kicks in a higher base rate than whatever other "best" code you were using.

In any case, the C&P award seems (to me, anyway) to be intended for short stays. I always thought this was a big Starwood advantage to have these awards, and when HH introduced them I was pretty happy as well. (Conrad HKG was a good place to use them and may still be, depending on their rates.) They create a usefulness for points when you aren't planning on a big AXON/GLON type stay. As much as I love Marriott Travel Packages, it's a bit restricting that MR points are so incredibly useless for 1 or 2 night stays.