LovetoTravel83

No and no. Not willing to go to the 100 night limit this year either.

kaizen7

Reach me proactively : no

She does ask feedback about the property after stay.

I usually send an update when I plan some trips and start making reservation to keep her in the loop.
And also to make everyone life easier, the update is sort of weekly update (or even monthly if the trips still few months away)
Usually I told her what reservations I made during the period (weekly or monthly) and further reservations I plan to make but haven't done yet.

Closer to the date then I email her the requests like airport transfers or any other requests to the hotel concierge.

So far she was very efficient with these requests. Our timezone was very close ... only 1 hour difference. So if I send in my requests during work hour she usually send the acknowledgement within the hour and then we wait for the hotel to reply.

Travelchurner

Can I buy a $3500 gc in person for hit the 20k spend requirement?

RafKa

You must be crazy to think an Ambassador is worth an extra $3.5k in spend. That's a lot of "free" cakes and $5 bottles of wine you'll need to get to make it worthwhile!

zerolife

you still have more than 4 months to go unless you know you are grounded for the rest of the year

as Rafka said, as a current Ambassador, I do not think its worth the trouble even if you know you can spend the $3500 in gift card the next year. Honestly I was getting cakes & booze as a Platinum too except for maybe once a year my Ambassador would arrange something special. Most of the time it's property awarding Platinum +. Otherwise, I don't think your Ambassador has more power compared to Platinum customer support

pewpew

I'm getting neither cake nor wine (except as service recovery from a hotel which knows I don't drink ) as an ambassador; I must be doing something wrong

UA-NYC

I can't think of poorer uses of $3,500...

Zol

Is that a joke?

Travelchurner

Sorry, I forgot to mention the $3.5k gc will be reimbursed by my employer in 2020 for work travel.
Still not worth it?

arlflyer

Your employer's accountant probably thinks it isn't worth it, that's for sure.

joeags

Nah. He's no doubt fronting this out of his own pocket. Then it doesn't matter as it's on the OP to pull the cash out of pocket and get reimbursed next year as the work travel occurs. It's an investment for the OP - is it worth the investment income that he's bypassing? That's his call.

If it's the owner, it again doesn't matter because the gift card will be classified as an asset until used next year.

That being said, the main question I don't know the answer to - does the spend on the gift card count when purchased at a hotel?

chipmaster

What upgrade or treats is 3.5K worth, LOL

arlflyer

On a rack rate basis, one could argue that you would come out even after a couple weeks in suites. I'm playing the devil's advocate to some extent here - it's a flawed argument in that 1) it's not really apples to apples if OP wasn't going to pay for said suites anyhow, and 2) there's of course no guarantee of getting the upgrades - $3.5K up front is a big leap of faith!!!

mecabq

Isn't the OP suggesting buying a Marriott gift card, so that (assuming he continues to travel), he will eventually spend that $3,500 at Marriott anyway? Perhaps soon if he's already spent $16,500 with them this year. So the only cost would be the time value of money.

Lots of snarky responses here but no one answered the question as to whether this purchase would qualify. I am curious too.

margarita girl

I believe others have posted that incidental spend (food and beverages) doesn't count. I would guess that credit card purchase wouldn't either. Makes sense since when the OP uses those gift cards, the amount he spends at the hotel will be counted. So that would be double dipping with the same purchase (spend for buying gift cards and spend for using gift cards).