Originally Posted by
Hornetcoach
That is not my experience, I have had little problem finding good use for the certificates. Certainly they have been significantly downgraded over the past few years. I am using two 35k certificates in Paris next month and the regular rate is close to $200 a night. Not great but a good reward for the $95 spent on the cards.
People are always going to (unreasonably imo) whine about the Marriott FNCs. It’s weird. Somehow it’s OK to burn a Hyatt cat 1-4 cert at Gild Hall ($160 rn) but apparently too hard to burn the Marriott 35K FNC when places like the AC NYC Downtown are always options ($160 rn).
Let’s assume a worst case scenario and you cannot redeem the certs at a cat 5 due to peak pricing so you redeem it a peak cat 4 (30K points). With a $95 AF discounted 15% to 109.25, we are talking about getting Marriott points at a 0.36 cents per point valuation. If redeeming Bonvoy points for something in excess of that is a challenge for someone, I don’t think it’s particularly productive for that person to engage with Bonvoy at all.