Ok I Should call back.

Value of 5 night Cat 5 Package
 

I have 5 nights reserved at a Marriott Cat 5 hotel using the 5 nights from a travel package I redeemed. If I cancel the reservation does another 5 night Cat 5 certificate go back into my account or are points added back to my account. Does anyone know how many points this is worth?

If you cancel the reservation, a 5-night award e-cert should be deposited back into your account. Now, just to make sure, this is a 5-night award or a 7-night award? My understanding is that a 5-night TP award is a possibility for MVCI owners, not general members.

As for how many points you could get back into your account. I don't remember off the top of my head (and probably never have seen the value for the 5-night award). But I can say that the value is far, far less than the 100K points a normal 5-night Cat. 5 award would cost. (This is due to the value of the airline awards you would receive.) And if I remember correctly, the amount you would get back is dependent on the amount of airline awards you received from the award. So if you redeemed for 50K airline miles, you would get more points back from returning your hotel award than if you redeemed for 120K airline miles.

but I think it will be dated from the original cert........... (ie. not from the date of CXL +1-year)

I did the 120K/5 night travel package and in my account activity it shows 40,000 point value.

It was a 5 night travel package I was able to book by owning a timeshare. I originally got the package when AA was a partner and got Marriott to extend the cert one year. I booked the Marriott in Park City for 5 nights during Sundance this year, Was very surprised Marriott opened Reward rooms for that time period.

Marriott package points question
 

Hi all. I am trying to plan a grand family vacation for 6 of us for May, 2013 so we have plenty of time. I will have over 350,000 MR points by this May and we are looking at going to Hawaii or Europe. All options are on the table at this point. I've read on here that packages are the best way to go to maximize points, and I agree with that. Two questions:

1) When we book a package, does MR just dump the points into our frequent flyer account and expect us to handle all the flight arrangements, or do they help out with those? I don't want to book a hotel and package only to find there are no free seats available.

2) I will have enough United miles on my own for another free 1-2 tickets depending on where we fly. Is there anyway to coordinate with MR to get as much of this free as possible, or am I on my own there?

Any suggestions from anyone who has done something similar would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

They just give you the miles.

I would arrange all your flights, put them on hold, then call Marriott to do the transfer. Award flights can usually be held 5 days (I am AA but I believe UA is the same)

It may be difficult to book all 6 of you on the same flight. Are you opposed to splitting up?

The miles are just transferred into whatever account you specify. Marriott does not help you make flight arrangements. Like Vicki says, find you flights first on whatever airline, then transfer the points. You can pay Marriott a small fee to expedite, but I find that standard transfers to United take about 3 days.

The hotel can be booked separately, first or later. I often make a hotel reservation, and change the "payment" to a travel package once I'm ready to transfer the miles and commit to the trip. You also do not have to use the hotel in conjunction with your flights, i.e. they are independent.

Billy

I recently went through a similar process - we have eight people going to Hawaii in August. We got two of the travel packages plus existing points and miles to cover all the flights and most of the hotel rooms we'll need. I spend several hours trying to figure out how to get 8 seats out there and back, and finally made it work.

I found that Continental's website was the most helpful in figuring out the flights for us. It reflects United and US Airways flights in addition to Continental, so we ended up using 240,000 Continental miles from the travel package booked on Continental.com, but will not be on any Continental flights.

Keep in mind the hotel certificate in the travel package has to be used within one year, so you will want to hold off on getting it until after May this year. Plus, seats and rooms don't open up for booking until ~11 months in advance.

Regarding expediting the miles to your account, there is no charge for that if you are platinum.

Let me know if you have any specific questions I might could help with. Good luck!

The only issue with waiting to order the award is that an airlines' award availability may disappear. And you won't get those miles deposited into your airline account until after you order the award. So if you find the airline awards availability you want, you may be better off ordering your package award now so that you can lock in the airline award flights.

Also, it has been noted here that some have been able to extend their hotel award cert for a 2nd year. (There is no guarantee that you will be success in this, but it seems that Marriott has been willing to do that for some.)

Thanks for the great and helpful responses so far. Since the kids (our two sons and their 2 female friends) are all college age, we know when they will be getting out of school already, so there is no issue in booking 11 months out. We've heard early May is a great time to go anywhere due to it being shoulder season in so many places. As some of you said, my big challenge is going to be getting six of us to the same place at roughly the same time as cheaply as possible. Even if we are able to book free tix for 3-4 of us, at what point do we then book the other 2-3? Fares that far can still be expensive but we don't want to wait and have those flights fill up either.

Would HIGHLY recommend cashing in on a Travel Package award when UA or whatever airline you are getting points for offer a % Transfer Bonus.

Not to be dense, but how does one know when there is a transfer bonus? I did a search, and I see there was a Delta bonus a few months ago, but I have no recollection of having seen any notice of it back then (although to be fair, I don't do much on Delta so maybe I ignored or forgot it). Do the Marriott emails tell you when a bonus is on, or is it on the website?

Best example is last May: transfer USAirways mileage points and receive a 75% transfer bonus. Specifically, if utilize the Marriott package that contains 120,000 airline points then (with last year's offer) you were actually given 210,000 USAirways miles.

After depleting my account for a Travel Package + All-Inclusive Award to Curacao I have nearly built up enough points for another Travel Package. Hopefully this will time well with an airline transfer bonus.