jangell

Family members have recently made the switch from Hilton to marriott and are indicating that less points per stay are required for marriott stays when comparing to Hiltons program.

I've been a AMEX surpass user for the past number of years and generally spend 50-75K annually on the card which give me Diamond status. Looks hard to get to the Marriott Platinum Status with Credit Card purchases only.

Question for the group here.

What's the best marriott Credit Card to get
What kind of a status would I be looking at with $50k in annual purchases and how does that status compare to Hilton Diamond
Are the point redemptions/Rewards nights better with Marriott than with Hilton

Would appreciate any and all comments or advice.

BuBu4

Whats your 5/24 status? im guessing you are under it right? I think the best way to start collecting Marriott points is applying for Amex SPG biz, then depending on what your status is, Marriott Personal and Amex SPG personal.

Aristophanes80

Marriott generally requires fewer points for a free night, but you also earn fewer points from stays and from the Marriott credit card which only earns one Marriott point per dollar. The Amex SPG card is a much much better option for earning Marriott points because SPG points convert 1:3 to Marriott (due to the companies merging) and the SPG card earns one SPG point per dollar. The Marriott card comes with silver status, which is mostly useless, and the SPG card comes with no free status. Your profile seems to indicate you're a United 1K though, which means you get free Marriott gold status through a partnership between United and Marriott. Marriott Gold pretty good for a mid-tier status, but if you really want Marriott Platinum without earning it the hard way, you can spend 75k per year on the Ritz card by Chase. This is not that great of a deal, however, since that 75k in spend will only earn 1 Marriott point per dollar (compared to 3/$ with the SPG card) and the Ritz card has a high annual fee.

MDJennings

If you can stomach the $450 AF, apply for the Ritz Carlton card from Chase instead. If you spend $75,000 on your card in a calendar year, you get Platinum status which is valid at all Marriott, Ritz, and Starwood properties. $10,000 a year on the Ritz card gets you Gold.

jangell

Hmmm. Interesting - Sounds like you are saying that the value for my points is greater with marriott, which would echo what others in my family have told me.

On the Credit Card side - Sounds like its about equal as I earn one point per dollar on non hilton purchases via my Surpass Card.

Only questions left are which card should I get for the maximum point accrual if I am going to switch to Marriott and is there a significant difference between Marriott Gold and Hilton Diamond (as it soulds like I'll only make gold with Marriott based on my purchase history,

jags86

I don’t know the specifics of the Marriott and Hilton cards but I wouldn’t use number of points for an award night as a barometer for which card is better. You need to look at how much spend you need to do in order to earn an award night. So if credit card/hotel brand A earns 1 point per $1 spent but only needs 10,000 points for a free night and card/hotel brand B earns 3 points per $1 and a free room costs 20,000 points, you’re better off with the hotel brand that has a higher nominal cost of points for rooms—all other things equal.

That said, Hilton points are pretty low value, and Marriott/SPG points are very flexible.

sdsearch

For one year.

But that's the card that's going to be replaced by an Amex card in the next year or so. So it's not necessarily a long term solution. (Chase is going to keep the lower-end cards for the new program, while Amex will get the business card and the high-end card, which sure sounds like a replacement for the Rtiz card. But the benefits could change completely on such a new "high end" card.

Well, they're wrong!

It depends on where you're staying. Some places Marriott properties require less points, but other places Hilton properties require less points. Anyone who claims one program always requires less points has not looked far enough.

I have had points in both programs for quite a few years, and I find places where Marriott is the better use of points, and other places where Hilton is the better use of points. I recently used 21k points per night for an HGI in the Huntsville AL area where the cheapest Marriott property was 35k or more.

Meanwhile, status at Marriott is hard to earn from a card except for the (about to go poof this year!) Rtiz card (with rather high spend).

But there's not a great deal of difference between Marriott Gold (at 50 nights) and Marriott Platinum (at 75 nights) other than upgrade priority and the United Silver status you get with Platinum. But 50 nights is still hard to get with even two Marriott cards (personal and business) giving you a 30 night start, since to get an addtional night from the card you need to spend $3000. So for 20 additional nights (to get to 50 with no stays), you'd have to spend $60000. But, of course, if you'll stay a substantial number of those 20 nights, you won't need anywhere near that much spend (but you will two cards, not one).

And keep in mind that everything about the Marriott program may change in the next year (as they merge the Marriott, Ritz, and SPG programs into one new program). So no matter what you look at it, all you know is how it's how it's going to work this year, not next year.

So if you only want do one or the other (Hilton or Marriott), maybe you should to see how the merged program settles out?

The SPG card is going away by the end of this year. The rRitz is going away by the end of this year. The SPG, RItz, and Marriott programs are merging into one new one in about year. No one yet knows how the new one will work, how each credit card will work with the new program, etc.

AmEx Scores a Starwood Win as Marriott Opts for Dual Issuers AmEx and JPMorgan

So IMHO now is terrible time to make a long-term decision about whether to move to Marriott or not.

And I have both lots of Marriott and lots of Hilton points, and compare them many places, and while perhaps more places have Marriott properties for less points, some paces have Hilton for less points. I just stayed at an HGI which cost 21k a night and the lowest-priced Marriott property was 35k at least. So Marriott is definitely not always less points.

And it doesn't matter in small towns where there's only a Hilton property or only a Marriott property (among those two programs). I've seen plenty of towns like that.

Yoshi212

Don't you get a comp'd Marriott Gold status from your United Platinum status?

mia

https://secure.unitedmileageplus.com...h.html?lang=en

jangell

OOPS. Gott update that - I'm not 1k any longer.

LF72

Big fan of the Marriott card.

Here is a link for 120K points: https://creditcards.chase.com/a1/marriottpremier/120k

I already have both and don't really stay at Hilton, so I want to give my Surpass up. Any recommendations for AMEX cards? I already have both SPG cards and gold.

mia

This offer does not include a new account bonus in the conventional sense. Instead it offers 10 points per dollar on all spending, up to $12,000, in the first year. Some of these will be bonus points, but others are base points that you would earn if you applied for a different offer.

Discussion since late November here:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chas...l#post29102251