Redemption Availability
 

When do Marriott Bonvoy properties generally start to release rooms for redemption?
Looking at late May 2020 I am seeing next to nothing throughout Europe, is this normal?

I am surprised that you are "seeing next to nothing throughout Europe" for late May 2020.

Normally, hotels loads reservation inventory — cash inventory and Marriott Bonvoy points inventory — into Marriott.com around 50 weeks in advance.

When I looked at London for 2020 this morning, I saw plenty of availability through the second week of June 2020.

From past experience, there are cases when individual hotels choose to wait longer before releasing inventory. But these are exceptions.

"throughout Europe"? Marriott has over 500 properties in Europe. How many of those did you check?

I have plenty of complaints about Bonvoy, but award availability is not one of them.

A couple of specific examples would help us in finding you this award availability, or else an explanation as to why it’s not there.

FWIW though, over that last few hours the website and app seems to have been experiencing intermittent problems in displaying any availability at all : earlier today I had a couple of wide searches return nothing, paid or award.

Thanks for the feedback. I've been doing quite wide searches Greece/Italy, May 23-30 with little joy. Could it be that as a family of four there are less room types available, meaning less reward availability?

Pretty sure I was able to book Domes of Elounda nearly a year in advance last year?

The whole reservations systems seems to be down right now so I'll explore multi room options later.

Yes, if you're seeking to book four in one room in Europe that is generally not going to work.

This might be related to today's website issues. While I can search rates for cash, the website is showing no availability for points on dates in the near future as well.

We've always booked 2 rooms for our family of 4 in Europe. There are very few 3+ person rooms, and they tend to cost more than two, 2-person rooms.

I believe this is what you're probably encountering. Do give it a try when the IT staff / website decide to work. Unless a hotel's almost fully booked, availability's usually very good. Even when there is availability, make sure it makes sense. I've had plenty of times when booking via cash made more sense. BUT, with Marriott's system, I've also gotten some great redemptions as well where the points were a great deal compared to paying cash.

Not sure if this helps but I did find a way around the issue. We are a family of four, two adults, two children (5 and 1). After phoning a few properties i found out that it is perfectly fine to book a room with a maximum capacity of three as the baby in a crib does not count. This opened up much more availability when searching for redemption stays. The price and availability between three and four occupancy rooms is huge across the Marriott portfolio.