Originally Posted by
cruser1
Your contacts are not wrong. The gap is huge! Trying to get value from Marriott points is nearly impossible these days!
Sticking to France since the data above started with France, the average value of a Marriott point across the country is 0.5869 cents USD. Marriott sells points for 0.89 cents USD. Only 5.34% of the redemptions across France right now would yield value (break-even at 0.89 or get a better value).
They want to sell as many points as possible, you're correct, but they also have to be careful because they don't want to make points useless and have people stop buying.
Hilton is not worse. Marriott is much worse! It's not even close!
If I repeat the same exercise as above, calculating what percentage of nights across France yield a cost per point of 0.89 cents (the cost at which Marriott sells points at a discount) over the past 90 days, you'll see the percentage is much lower (see table below). About 95% of the redemptions wouldn't even break-even if you bought points. It would be very easy to torch an award balance with Marriott. I used to have 1.3 million Marriott points shortly before the pandemic and it has taken 5 years to get that down to about 230k - trying to stick to redemptions above the cost of buying points.
Code:
+------------+--------------------------+
| day | percentage_at_least_0.89 |
+------------+--------------------------+
| 2025-11-26 | 5.12 |
| 2025-11-25 | 5.11 |
| 2025-11-24 | 5.03 |
| 2025-11-23 | 5.12 |
| 2025-11-22 | 5.05 |
| 2025-11-20 | 5.40 |
| 2025-11-19 | 5.30 |
| 2025-11-18 | 5.83 |
| 2025-11-17 | 5.76 |
| 2025-11-16 | 5.78 |
| 2025-11-15 | 5.97 |
| 2025-11-14 | 5.86 |
| 2025-11-13 | 5.63 |
| 2025-11-12 | 5.61 |
| 2025-11-11 | 5.41 |
| 2025-11-10 | 5.37 |
| 2025-11-09 | 5.31 |
| 2025-11-08 | 5.64 |
| 2025-11-07 | 7.05 |
| 2025-11-06 | 6.87 |
| 2025-11-05 | 6.69 |
| 2025-11-04 | 6.75 |
| 2025-11-03 | 6.77 |
| 2025-11-02 | 6.86 |
| 2025-11-01 | 6.65 |
| 2025-10-31 | 6.28 |
| 2025-10-30 | 6.45 |
| 2025-10-29 | 6.76 |
| 2025-10-28 | 5.76 |
| 2025-10-27 | 5.46 |
| 2025-10-26 | 5.58 |
| 2025-10-25 | 5.78 |
| 2025-10-24 | 5.74 |
| 2025-10-23 | 5.64 |
| 2025-10-22 | 5.43 |
| 2025-10-21 | 5.74 |
| 2025-10-20 | 6.17 |
| 2025-10-19 | 6.40 |
| 2025-10-18 | 6.25 |
| 2025-10-17 | 6.37 |
| 2025-10-16 | 6.50 |
| 2025-10-15 | 6.46 |
| 2025-10-14 | 6.32 |
| 2025-10-13 | 6.37 |
| 2025-10-12 | 6.42 |
| 2025-10-11 | 6.42 |
| 2025-10-10 | 6.34 |
| 2025-10-09 | 6.43 |
| 2025-10-08 | 6.48 |
| 2025-10-07 | 6.63 |
| 2025-10-06 | 6.64 |
| 2025-10-05 | 6.67 |
| 2025-10-04 | 6.71 |
| 2025-10-03 | 6.46 |
| 2025-10-02 | 6.73 |
| 2025-10-01 | 6.42 |
| 2025-09-30 | 6.82 |
| 2025-09-29 | 6.49 |
| 2025-09-28 | 6.27 |
| 2025-09-27 | 6.49 |
| 2025-09-26 | 6.13 |
| 2025-09-25 | 6.00 |
| 2025-09-24 | 5.55 |
| 2025-09-23 | 6.03 |
| 2025-09-22 | 5.95 |
| 2025-09-21 | 6.29 |
| 2025-09-20 | 6.22 |
| 2025-09-19 | 6.47 |
| 2025-09-18 | 6.85 |
| 2025-09-17 | 7.11 |
| 2025-09-16 | 7.04 |
| 2025-09-15 | 6.48 |
| 2025-09-14 | 6.39 |
| 2025-09-13 | 6.32 |
| 2025-09-12 | 6.26 |
| 2025-09-11 | 6.10 |
| 2025-09-10 | 6.16 |
| 2025-09-09 | 6.56 |
| 2025-09-08 | 6.39 |
| 2025-09-07 | 6.38 |
| 2025-09-06 | 6.45 |
| 2025-09-05 | 6.19 |
| 2025-09-04 | 6.13 |
| 2025-09-03 | 6.01 |
| 2025-09-02 | 6.09 |
| 2025-09-01 | 6.61 |
| 2025-08-31 | 6.54 |
| 2025-08-30 | 6.58 |
| 2025-08-29 | 6.50 |
| 2025-08-28 | 6.47 |
+------------+--------------------------+
Marriott's redemptions are supposedly based on demand, which leads to some wild fluctuations, but even some of the huge drops in award price often don't lead to a good redemption value. The current cyber sale is making finding value from redemptions even harder.
It really depends on where you go - for my travel pattern Marriott is by far the best. I just had a stay in KL Moxy. Weekend night is 7500 points (not great but since I arrived really early I could benefit from early check-in since I'm LTP), then I had a 5 night bookings at a total of 20k. Cash rate was like 235 RM++ and availability is widely available.
I have yet to find any good redemption for IHG hotel for my needs.