Advice: Using Marriott Vacation Package to qualify for Southwest Companion Pass
 

Hi all,

First time poster, long-time lurker here so please be gentle... :)

My wife and I have been collecting points and miles for a few years -- mostly via credit card signups, personal spending and about $300K/yr in small-business spending -- and we currently have roughly 1.75 million points/miles between Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, SPG Points and Southwest Rapid Rewards.

I have been a Southwest Companion Pass holder for the past few years and we've gotten a great deal of use out of the program. I have already qualified for the CP through 2014, so I'm planning to purchase a Marriott vacation package to get my wife to Companion Pass status as well. She currently has around 70K qualifying points for 2013, so she needs 40K to get her to CP status for next year. Our family is planning a lot of domestic travel next year, and this way we can each designate our kids as companions and travel with them on points through 2014.

It is my understanding that the Rapid Rewards points that transfer through these Marriott vacation packages count toward the CP. That said, I have a few questions for anyone with experience using these packages:

First, are there any restrictions on when you have to use the vacation package nights? We're planning a vacation to Europe in August of 2015 (two years from now) and would like to use the vacation package nights then. Will the package still be good in 2015?

Second, are they even good in Europe?

Third, we've got about 325,000 UR points between us, so we're seriously considering going big and buying another 50K Marriott points so we can get the Category 9 + 100K Rapid Rewards package for 370K Marriott points. This way we have an additional 50K Rapid Reward points for family travel in 2014 and can stay at the Paris Marriott Hotel Champs-Elysees or Renaissance Paris Vendome Hotel while we're in France. Is this a reasonable plan (assuming the answers to 1 and 2 are yes)?

Fourth, (and probably most importantly) are there any potential pitfalls or grossly underestimated opportunity costs I'm missing with this plan? I've been okay with earning points/miles to this point, but I've obviously got a lot to learn about the best ways to use them.

Many thanks in advance for any feedback!

--Jim.

Moderator action
 

Thread transferred to the Marriott Rewards forum because most of the questions pertain to using the hotel portion of the bundle.

I don't know the answers, but wanted to say Welcome to FT!

Cheers.

Thanks to the Mod for moving to the correct forum (sorry about that!), and thanks for the welcome!

Following-up on my original post, I called Marriott this morning, and the representative said these packages CAN be used in Europe but they must be used within one year of booking. That said, she didn't sound too sure of this last statement, so I may call back later and see if I can confirm. If worse comes to worse, we can just move our European travel up to next summer.

Otherwise, my third and fourth original questions still stand and I'd love to get any feedback on those that I can.

Many thanks again!

First, welcome to FT.

The Travel Package (TP) hotel e-cert is the same as any other Marriott hotel award cert. So if there is a award room availability, the TP hotel cert can be used. Note that you have to use the whole e-cert for your stay. That means it has to be used in one hotel for one stay.

The award is usable at any Marriott hotel world-wide as long as you have the correct category (i.e. a Cat. 7 won't work at a Cat. 9 hotel, etc.)

Your plan sounds like it will work. The biggest issue is making sure the hotel you want to use the award at has award availability for your desired nights. Note that with Marriott you can make an award reservation before you have the points needed for that award. So if you know where you want to go now, you can make the award reservation and then order the TP award later.

The only other thing I might think about is how you would get to Europe? Marriott's TP awards can get you airline points in most any of the world's major carriers. So you might want to decide if you might get more benefit from getting airline miles from a different airline.

welcome to FT feckman! You seem to have done a fair bit of research and have pretty specific questions...so, let me try to respond:

Think of them as e-certs (i.e., there has to be award availability during your desired dates) ...much like the cat 1-4 or 1-5 from MegaBonus promotions, except that (a) you can redeem more points for higher category certs (but, you can always use the certs. at lower categories than the maximum on the cert.) and (b) you MUST use them for consecutive nights (e.g., if you have a 7-night one, you can't break-up the nights across different stays or locations)

Absolutely! I used one (from a Travel Package...that also qualified me for WN CP status) at the Paris Marriott Hotel Champs-Elysees for a stay in February.

It'll work....but, what value do you place on UR points? With the ability to combine your points with your spouse's (Point transfer - Most ridiculus procedure ever), you could buy 100k Marriott (that, from a marginal perspective, end up as 100k more WN @ $0.0125/pt.) at a value less than what you might place on UR.

If you are waiting until Jan. 2014 to do this, Southwest may make changes to the CP program (and qualification)...you never know. Plus, this past year, they didn't process CP qualification very quickly early in the year.

Bolded = true & true (although, it is really more precise to say that they must be used within one year of redemption of the points for the travel package).


Helpful other threads:

Marriott Travel Packages (Maybe OP's thread should be merged into this thread?)

Travel Package Questions

Hotel + Air Package Reward questions

And, of course: Do Marriott Travel Package Points Count as CPQP?

Thanks for your input! That's an excellent point, but I believe we have plenty of "other" points/miles that we can lean on for the international travel. As of now we have something like 400K MR points and 200K BA Avios. What I'm hoping is that a second SW Companion Pass (and the associated Rapid Rewards that go along with getting it) will cover our whole family's domestic travel plans through 2014.

This is a very interesting prospect and something I'll definitely consider. If I can save 100K UR by purchasing the Marriott points, it absolutely makes sense to do so.

Got it. So, if I'm understanding this correctly, I have one year from the time I "purchase" the travel package with points to actually use the hotel part of the package, yes?

Outstanding, thank you! I'll start reading up on these ASAP. Thanks so much!

Yes, your stay must be completed by then - it expires 1-year from the time you make the redemption.

Since you can:

1. make a points reservation without enough points in the account;
2. convert a 7-night points booking into one using this cert. (by calling); and
3. cancel and re-apply the cert to a new reservation,

when you want the points (as CPQPs) to hit your WN RR account is probably one of the biggest considerations for you (because you can first make a pts. res. without enough points, then buy the MR pts. and/or transfer in UR pts. (and go through the transfer process, if necessary - for which, IIRC, you'll need an existing reservation), then redeem the travel package, and then, have the 7-nt. cert applied to your reservation) - assuming your planned 7-night Marriott stay is within 1-year from your redemption date.

Got it. I did see in one of the posts you listed a person who said that certificates can be extended for a year:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/19757041-post18.html

This was last November -- does anyone know if this is still true?

Thanks again!

I read that before as well, but I would be cautious as it is not a guarantee. You probably have to wait close to the expiration to request another year extension.

You actually can break them up across different locations/properties as long as they are the same category level. It is not advertised but I got confirmation from a MR supervisor that it can be done.

How long ago was the confirmation? Was it in writing?

My understanding was that the "Sampler" options are no longer available - see these posts:

MR Travel Packages Question - Use at multiple hotels?

And, this post.

And, this other post.

Also, here are some recent posts about the inability to split the package up:

Travel Package Questions

Marriott Travel Packages

Have you or do you know anyone who has had success with a travel package booked across multiple hotels? And/or non-consecutive dates?

Maybe Marriott Concierge can settle the issue?

The conversation I had with a MR supervisor was about 2 weeks ago.
I was looking at doing a travel package for 7 consecutives dates but split it between 2 properties.

I was told they would be able to do it as long as the properties were in the same category level.

If this is true, it would be a major change. I would strongly suggest that anyone trying to do this first get it in writing that you can do this. Personally, suspect either you have a majorly misinformed supervisor or you were misunderstanding what they were saying.

As mentioned, Marriott used to have some "sampler" awards where you could do this. But even back then, those awards where for specific "groups" of hotels (not all of them within a category level) and could NOT be ordered as the hotel part of a TP award.