Originally Posted by
svo242
Interesting analysis, thanks for sharing! I always thought Marriott earning was quite good, but I see that that may not be the case. I think about it like this:
With Hyatt, if I were to put $8,000 hotel spend on the credit card, I'd get 32,000 Hyatt points, enough for a night at a Park Hyatt, which could be worth about $1,000.
With Marriott, if I were to put $8,000 hotel spend on the credit card, I'd get 48,000 Marriott points, not even enough for many of the more upscale Marriott resorts, or for most full-service hotels in NYC. That being said, the SPG card only gave 2x points for hotel stays, so $8,000 of hotel spend (16,000 Starpoints) still wouldn't get me close to a top-tier redemption that costs 30,000 points. Seems like the (old) SPG card and new Marriott cards are relatively aligned, even if it remains lower than competitors.
Hyatt is undoubtedly a richer program in terms of non-hotel earning. 1:1 transfer from UR is just insanely powerful. Coupled with the few high earning UR cards (5x categories from freedom flex, 5x and 10x categories from CSR, etc) and you have insanely powerful hotel stay machines. $3000 spend on Lyft/Tock dining (Tock dining is still bad IMO) gets you a night at a top tier Park Hyatt. Even $10,000 of normal spend can you get a night at a top tier Park Hyatt. Conversely… you would need to spend $25,000 with the Marriott Business card on dining (or $33K with the Brilliant) to guarantee a stay at a top tier STR/Ritz. At standard cat 8 pricing, you would still need to spend $21,250 on dining with the Bonvoy business. It’s just not comparable.
I have thought a lot about what it would take to make the Bonvoy Brilliant/Business competitive with Hyatt from an earning perspective. This is just fantasy btw I am 100% confident nothing like this will ever manifest for Marriott:
10x Bonvoy points on Marriott stays
8x Bonvoy points on dining
7x Bonvoy points on direct airfare and transit
6x on groceries and gas
This would make the Marriott card competitive on Marriott spend (it’s currently the weakest for chain hotel spend by far imo) and make the Bonvoy program a legitimate earn/burn program. That also would mean $12,500 in dining spend on the Bonvoy card would get you cat 8 peak ($10,625 standard).
Alternatively, if Amex ever bumped their transfer rate to Marriott to 1 MR = 2 Bonvoy, that would also be a game changer.
Again, this would mean $12,500 in dining spend on an Amex Gold would get you cat 8 peak ($10,625 standard).
Again, I know this will never happen. However, I strongly feel that Bonvoy cards would get much better (not close to this level) if Amex gained full exclusivity over them.
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Funny enough, Bonvoy is actually the best earning program from an innate hotel rebate perspective. However, other chains frequently run 2x and 3x promos whereas Marriott seems to seldom run anything. In these cases, Marriott strictly loses.
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I think anyone that follows my posting history can understand that I just love Marriott hotels but don’t particularly care for the Bonvoy program. To make up for weak earning opportunities in Bonvoy, I have focused on trying to farm 50K FNCs. I hope one day Marriott will offer a 100K FNC credit card option with a proportionate annual fee. I would gladly farm those as well.
I burned 2 of my 6 5/24 slots (MDDed at 4/24 to get 2 cards) with 0 SUB on Chase Marriott cards just to product change them to Ritz Cards later for the 50K FNC. I also plan to spend 3-4 of my 5 Amex CC slots on Marriott cards: 2-3 Bonvoy Brilliants and 1 Bonvoy Business. Paying $150-$180 for 50K FNCs is not as nice as farming points, but it’s the closest we can get with Bonvoy. Some people seem to dislike the FNCs on here but I find them to be quite powerful. There are many great category 6 hotels in the US alone: Ritz Chicago, Gwen Chicago, Ritz Miami Coconut Grove, JW Marquis Miami, W Boston, etc.