I ran into a new (to me) issue while booking a recent award redemption. Marriott applies award certificates inefficiently to charge a higher points co-pay.

I have free night certificates at different levels: a 35k certificate from a credit card, plus a 40k certificate from a 75-night choice award. I booked a two-night points stay. The two nights were 42k and 34k.

Applying the certificates efficiently would mean I would use my certs plus pay a 2k points top-up (40k cert + 2k for the first night, 35k cert for the second night). But when I applied both certificates to the reservation, Marriott would flip the order and apply them inefficiently: 35k cert + 7k points for the first night, 40k cert for the second night.

I tried different workarounds to get this to process correctly: unselecting the lower award and then reapplying it, same with the higher award, going through the pick-your-own cash and points option (choosing points each night).... Every time both certificates were on the reservation, though, it would default to the inefficient version. It was especially frustrating because when I selected just the 40k cert by itself, it would apply to the first night (the efficient way) and then would jump to the inefficient version only when I had both certificates live.

Has anyone else experienced this and does anyone know a workaround? Obviously there's always the option of booking two different reservations, but that comes with the (however low) risk of having to switch rooms partway through.

Thanks.

Have you tried calling Marriott and having an agent set it up? I have had issues with using the FNA certificates on the app so I just call them and the agent does it the way it should be done.

FNAs are applies in order of expiration. In your case to work around this you must book individual nights out of order.

Generally speaking, you make a dummy booking to temporarily "use" the first-expiring FNA to access the next-expiring FNA.

Yap, in these situations it's best to call Marriott to apply them in the efficient way. Otherwise you can get frustrated by their IT defaults.

Thank you to everyone in this thread. Calling in got it sorted out. Much appreciated.

This is your answer. Book a dummy one further out for the first certificate, this way you use the 40k. Then cancel that reservation to get the 35k back. Now book using the 35k.

Its annoying but the easiest way to do it

The potential problem if you do this is having two reservations for one night each and not getting the same room both nights. Likely the hotel can work it out, but I would prefer to call Marriott reservations and have them apply the FNA�s the right way on a single stay reservation.

The likelihood of having to move is minimized if you mention the second-night reservation upon check-in.

The likelihood of this happening is infinitely small. I book ALL my points stays as 1 night reservations (except when I get 5th night free) and I�ve never had to change rooms.

There are 2 reasons for doing this.
1) if you need to cancel 1 night and pts requirements have changed, it�s much easier to cancel just 1 night.
2) with dynamic pricing, you have the flexibility to adjust any price decreases on one night, without affecting the others.

And finally, if you re-read Schnit�s post, you�ll see that this isn�t what he was suggesting at all.

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