How much does it cost a hotel to give 5K points to a guest?
 

Long story short, my friend stayed at a Marriott in Thailand recently and had a service recovery offer of 5K points for the fact that their coffee machine was filthy. (You don’t want to know.)

She is wondering if she should take the 5K points or press for more.

That got me thinking, how much does it actually cost a hotel to issue 5K points to a guest? I assume the hotel actually has to pay Marriott to issue those points?

That's a good question. I recently complained about a terrible stay at a certain Category 8 hotel. We got refunded 100,000 points, I wonder how much the hotel or company had to pay for that.

Other than curiosity, why does it matter? The value to the recipient seems much more important.

well under 1/2 cent per point

Roughly, $40.
5,000 x .8 cents per point

You really think they pay retail? That seems unlikely.

I assure you they don’t pay retail.

Probably around 0.3-0.4 cent per point is my guess

I will say that back in the SPG days if you contacted corporate to file a complaint here was a fine imposed to the offending hotel. I think there was a fine for having a customer open up a complaint against your hotel and then another fine if they found out that the hotel was aware of the issue and didn't fully resolve the legit complaint (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here). Those fines more than likely would be higher than what they'd have to pay to purchase those points to give to you.

I think it is $3 per 1000point

Wrong wrong wrong. As a legacy spger I can tell you that hotels were never charged unless they did not respond to an issue from the Customer Care Center. I can also tell you that a Bonvoy point cots the hotel $0.0055. So there you go. Do the math.

$5.50/1,000 pts. x 5 = $27.50 for 5,000 Bonv°y™ points.

Or 5,000 points x $0.0055 = $27.50 :)
Why add an extra action?

What if someone is trying to do the math in their home currency? How many steps would they need to do? Would they first change the cost per point to local or first do the math for the total cost and then convert? :D

Hint ... see the smiley face on my post.

you believe TPG too much, that's funny

For a dirty coffee maker? She should apologize to staff for being such an annoying guest.