Yes. The TP hotel cert is no different than any other hotel award cert.

Marriott will let you hold the room reservation without having the points taken for the room up to a week prior to your stay. Let's suppose you want June 1-8 for your seven night package, but right now only the nights of June 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 show as available for points. Snag them and check back often for the night of June 4. Although you can get the site to hold the night without taking the points, I find calling Marriott works best for this. Just ask the agent not to take the points but to hold the night for a points redemption. You don't even need to mention the cert at this point. Don't wait until you can get all seven nights nor should you wait until you order the package to start holding the rooms. And since you can cancel at anytime, go ahead and hold whatever dates you think might work, even if it's two or three strings of seven. When you get the seventh night you can call Marriott to get them strung together and anytime up to a week prior to your stay you can get the certificate applied towards your stay. Once you know you are not using a date, please cancel it so others can plan vacations and so this flexibility isn't taken away.

This has worked for me all but twice. Once I could not get a night at the Venice Boscolo and once I couldn't get a night at the Sonoma Ren. Maybe a dozen or so other times it has worked.

Even better at places like the NY Marriott East -- $25 non-waivable destination fee or somesuch. It's horse dung that this isn't included in the rate displayed against other properties on marriott's site and it is a travesty that the FTC still allows customers to waste valuable time wading through the muck of these. based on the recent changes the DOT has made under Drumpf in respect of ancillary fee disclosures I suspect this isn't going to change any time soon.

I called yesterday to have my 7 night category 5 Travel package extended, and now my account says this: PARTIAL PKG-CAT 1-5 - 45,000 Points, Expires 12/29/2018

Is that normal? I called back, and got a very unhelpful person the second time.

Looks correct. What is the issue?

I am looking at booking a trip to Hawaii in April and I am trying to determine whether I should pursue a TP or not. I currently have enough points for a 6-night stay, but would probably have enough points in a couple months for a 7-night TP with 50k miles on Alaska.

Is the only advantage of the TP the ability to buy miles at 1:1? I currently have enough miles to buy all 4 of our tickets today since the award flights are only 17.5k miles each way for a non-stop flight. I've seen these flights jump up to 30k overnight, so I am concerned if I wait until I have enough MR points to get the 7-day TP, the flights could jump up to 30k and therefore eliminate any value in getting the 50k Alaska Miles (since it would now take 100k more miles to book all 4 tickets).

It seems like in my scenario it would make most sense to book the hotel as a normal award reservation without a TP, but I wanted to double check with all the experts here that I am not missing some other advantage of the TP.

There's no requirement that you use the miles from the TP for any particular redemption. Book the flights now with the miles you already have and save the TP miles for your next redemption?

Exactly. Book the flights now at the reduced rate, buy the travel package, and have 50K AS miles in reserve.

Makes perfect sense.

I guess I just need to decide if I’d prefer the 6-night or 7-night vacation. I’m leaning towards only wanting 6-nights which would mean the cost to get the 50k alaska Miles would go up (40k MR points for the extra nights plus actual costs for another day in Hawaii).

If only the 5-night certs were available to everyone. That would be the perfect scenario.

Thank you. Before I extended it, it said 7 night catgeory 1-5, or soemthing to that affect. I was worried they were trying to give me back my points instead.

This advice is correct. Use the points you have now to get your plane ticket and just put the new points into your account when you get the TP, but to add what you likely know but will advise just in case...

Make your hotel reservation now, too. You do not have to have the points taken when you hold the room. Don't wait until you have the cert when the rooms might not be available. Just hold the nights like it will be a points reservation. As long as you have and apply the cert at least one week before your stay you won't have a problem.

The 45k points appear to be the refundable value of the certificate at this time. The points toward the airline miles portion of the TP have already been spent. It's still a better value to use the certificate for 7 nights in a Cat 5 hotel, than to request a point refund.

I was advised by a Plat agent that the 7N certificate is non-refundable - should I call back and ask again?

Marriott calculates travel packages somewhat like this: x (= Marriott internal valuation of Airline miles in MR-Points) + y (Marriott internal valuation of nights certificate in MR-Points) = Points required for travel package. The package is non-refundable, because the MR-Points for the Airline miles are immediatly spent and the miles credited in the Airline accounts. There is no undoing of this part of the transaction.

I have been informed by a call center agent that I could have the Points value of the certificate re-credited if I needed these points for another redemption (e.g. a night at a high category/tier property). However, you get the raw end of the deal then because I would usually value a 7 night certificate much higher than the points Marriott attaches to this certificate internally. Back to your question, maybe the difference is that if you just ask for a refund you may not get it but when you would like to use the recredited points for another redemption Marriott will help you out and give the points back.

Thank you - and yes, perhaps the difference comes down to how the request is put.

I also agree that 7 nights are generally more valuable than 45k points, but I find myself redeeming many TPs because of the favourable exchange rate for AAdvantage, and there's only so many 7 night consecutive stays which I need in a year! So even getting a 45k refund will be useful in further reducing the exchange rate of the AA miles.