I called to upgrade my 7 night Travel Package Category 1-5 hotel certificate to a category 7 hotel certificate and now it shows up in my account as:


P910 PARTIAL PKG-CAT 7
Points Value: 105,000


Is that normal that it shows like that ? I'm a bit worried because it no longer says that the certificate is for 7 nights and the points value is no longer 270,000 points.

Thanks

I'm pretty sure you can upgrade when you book as long as you have enough points so you probably could have just waited.

We redeemed for a cat 7 TP and plan on upgrading to a cat 9.

Since the difference between the Cat 5 you booked and a Cat 7 is 60K points I have no idea why it shows 105K.

I would call back and make sure it's all set. GL

I think I know why it shows 105K. It's because, if I decide to refund the certificate to points, I would get 105K points: That is 45K points from the refund value of the cat 1-5 7 night certificate, plus the 60K points that I added.

Can anyone confirm ?

This is exactly right. Have seen these "partial packages" many times. They have always worked.

So would the refund for a TP originally booked as a Cat 7 also be 105K or is it just 45 k ? Thanks

That I don't know. I haven't asked or seen those refunds before.

I had a conversation with a Marriott Rewards supervisor last month where they explained that the packages can be upgraded with one exception. I was told, if you buy a Marriott (Category) package you cannot upgrade to a Ritz package (and vice versa).

For example, I bought a cat 1-5 Marriott package (to take advantage of the Aeroplan bonus) and I wanted to eventually upgrade it to a Ritz Tier 7 package when a bunch of points I am expecting come in. I was told that was not possible. I could upgrade to any Marriott Cat package but could not upgrade it to a Ritz Tier package.

Anyone have a similar experience or counter experience to that?

If its true - I guess I will just extend the cert in the hopes that when they merge the programs the ability to upgrade to Ritz (or SPG) will be available.

I used 2 travel certs to book 2 rooms at the JW in Beijing. Will I get lounge access for both rooms? If one of the guests in the second room is Gold, would that change anything?

I have always gotten lounge access for two rooms-even though not required. In your case you can guarantee it. The Gold reward member in the other room can have their name added and should be able to get lounge benefits as well. Award stays are transferrable. You should have no problem.

Can I use my voucher to book for my Parents or do I need to be staying at the property?

Marriott Travel Packages - A quick question
 

Hi All

I haven't used a Marriott travel certificate before and have a quick question.
The hotel that I'm looking to reserve, Category 9, requires 270,000 points for a seven night stay. However, when I looked at the travel packages table it states that I would need to redeem 390,000 points in order to gain a seven night stay plus 120,000 BA miles. I don't understand what the point is of redeeming 390,000 points for the package instead of 270,000 just for the hotel stay. My points would be converted from SPG points obtained from Amex membership rewards. I could convert the additional 120,000 required points directly to BA, so why go through Marriott.

Regards

i think you need to break that down into 270,000 marriott pts for 7 night HOTEL

OR

390,000 marriott pts for 7 night HOTEL and 120k BA pts,

Effectively you would be getting 120,000 BA pts for 120,000 Marriott pts.

You cannot get 120,000 BA miles for 120,000 MR points normally - the Travel Packages offer a much better redemption rate (1:1) for air miles in combination with the 7-night hotel certificate.

I'm based in the UK where 1 MR point converts to 1 BA Avios.

In Canada, we can also convert 1 MR to 1 Aeroplan or Avios. So for me it doesn't make sense to redeem a travel package and get Aeroplan points. Instead, I would ask for Alaska Mileage Plan since I value it more than the other programs, and it's something I can actually use. In your case, you might find it more appealing to choose another FF program other than Avios for the Travel Package.

180k Amex Canada = 180k Aeroplan
180k Amex = 90k SPG = 270k Marriott = 7 nights at a category 5 and 150k Aeroplan during a 25% hotel transfer promo

30k Amex Points tradeoff for 7 nights at a category 5 isn't something I would dismiss out of hand.

150k Aeroplan is worth about the same as 120k Alaska to me. Some give and take based on stopover rules and award availability.

That's a good point. Actually now that you said this, I think I would do it next year, hopefully AP runs the same promotion.

Is it different for gold/plat? I'm seeing 5 MR to 1 AP or Avios.

The problem is that JasGIll & Zoqfotpik are talking about Amex Membership Rewards points because they misunderstood our "MR" ;) while the rest of us are discussing Marriott Rewards points.

That makes sense. Considering the context was the Marriott Travel Packages though, should have been obvious which MR it was.

Since its a cumulative bonus, it can take 4-6 weeks from the last day of the promo.

Has anyone's bonus miles from the transfer to Aeroplan posted yet?

25% bonus when converting MR points to AAdvantage miles, including TPs. Now through June 15. Since this includes all MR point to AAdvantage conversions, I started a separate thread on this for those who may not frequent this one.

Has anyone had any luck recently refunding a 7 night Cat 1-5 certificate back into points? I've HUCA'd a few times now and have had no luck.

How would this be possible? They can't get the miles back from the airlines, can they?

But then again, your post makes it sound like someone did it in the past!

I think I recall reading that you can refund the certificate only back into the account (i.e. let the airline miles stay as they are), but it's a really small amount - I would much sooner find someone else who can use the certificate than try to refund it.

Marriott will refund 45k for for the 1-5 certificate itself, and then any points you spent to buy up in package also get refunded. Hardly worth it to refund the 1-5 cert itself since I'm sure at some point in travels you can find at least a couple of nights you might be able to use a Cat 5 cert, making it worth it.

I rarely ever stay somewhere for more than 2 or 3 nights and mostly stay at hostels. I would rather have the 15k starpoints back.

I'm also trying to get this done today and every agent said it cannot be done. Is there anything special I need to say or guide them to in order to do this? I'm just asking if I can get the hotel portion refunded and that I understand I cannot get all the points back. Do I need to call a specific number?

Well it looks like on my third call, the agent noticed that my account has been notated by the other 2 agents before about this request. I guess I'm not getting this done.

In all my years on FT and as a Marriott Rewards elite member, I cannot recall ever hearing that someone was able to get points back after purchasing a Travel Package. People have been able to extend them, but never return them or even break them into non-consecutive nights at the same property. You often see threads where people are looking for advice on how to burn off the certs, which would indicate the certs cannot be redeposited as points or those threads wouldn't be necessary.

Marriott historically has allowed the hotel cert to be returned, but as mentioned at a greatly reduced rate. This was due to the value of the transferred airline miles. In fact at one time there was a concern that they stopped allowing returns, but Marriott Concierge responded that they still allowed it: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...ml#post8190815

There was another thread around 5 years ago asking this same thing, http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...l#post18677011, and nobody that I know of responded at that time that Marriott had changed the rules on returning the hotel portion of a TP award.

Using someone else's 7 night travel package (booked for me):

Is it possible to add my own MR # to earn the stay credit?

I don't believe so.... probably worth a call to MR, though, for a definitive answer.

When I have used my travel package stays, my name was required to be on the reservation, even when I book for a friend. With that said, I don't believe it's possible to simply transfer it to another person and have that person get the credit for the nights.

I've never experienced this.

book 5/7 night reward stay as per usual using online functionality.

if not enough points in your account, great, then apply the marriott TP hotel certificate online.

if you have enough points to book the hotel stay, then call customer service and have them apply the cert from your account and refund the points.

In neither of these circumstances is there anything at all special or unusual about a travel package reservation that is different from a 100% points reservation and you can (and I have) booked them for friends without having any connection to my name or MR account afterwards.

But the question is will your friend get credit for the nights stayed? Before last year, this wasn't an issue because no credit was given for free nights. Now that you get credit for the nights stayed, can that credit go to a second party who used your cert or points? If I redeem the cert and stay for seven nights, I get seven nights credit. If my friend uses my cert and stays seven nights, will he get the seven nights credit?

I'm interested in heading to vietnam and wanted to book a marriott package where I could fly NYC-Vietnam via CX in first and/orJ with 7 night stays 1-5 cat. I have 270K marriott points or I would once I combine my spg and marriott account and transfer 9k Chase URs to top off my marriott account. Is this possible and would it be a good value? Anyone used a package like this? I'm also wondering if this is something that can be done on short notice. Like I want to take the trip from the third week of June into July. It used to be CX opened up seats in F/J on short dates but I don't know if that is still the case.

With a TP award, Marriott will only deposit airline "miles" in the program of your choice. How you use those miles after they are in your airline program's account is totally dependent on that airline program.

I can say that in general, international First Class award tickets tend to be much harder to come by than normal coach award tickets (for all airlines) and usually require farther out planning. Some may well open up Business and/or First Class awards last minute. But you will probably get better answers those types of program details in the airline forum rather than in the Marriott forum. You might be better off going over to the Cathay forum and asking there how easy/hard it is to get short notice FC award tickets to Vietnam. Also, if your not sure on the award pricing for various award flight options, they will be much better able to help you there as well.

All we can do here is say that in most circumstances, the airline miles tend to post in the program of choice within a week of ordering the TP award. Also, don't forget that Cathay partners with AA and AA is currently offering bonus miles (25% extra) right now. Also, I do believe you get fewer Asia miles (max of 85K miles) if you transfer directly to them rather than say AA or UA.

So you might want to go over to MilesBuzz and ask which airline might be the best airline to have short notice FC award tickets and how many points it would cost. Then when you get your answer, you might head over to that program's forum and look around. They might be able to help you search for available award tickets. Once you have that info, then you can decide if you will have enough points from a TP award (plus any that you might already have) for what you want and if there is availability. Don't forget to check the Marriott TP award webpage to verify how many miles are transferred to each airline program as they have different amounts for different airlines.

Not sure if there are any Cat5 or lower hotels in Vietnam (you may have to pay in some additional points if you plan to stay at the JW in Hanoi or the Renaissance in Saigon, for instance).... but if so, that would be a great deal if you can find the saver award inventory. Good luck.

First, so long as you are a little flexible you should have no problem using your travel package at the last minute, especially Vietnam in summer.

Let me throw this out here, although you didn't ask... If you are planning to stay in the JW Resort Phu Quoc a seven (of five) day cert makes sense. If you are planning to tour through Vietnam, it doesn't. The JW Hanoi is located over thirty minutes from where you would want to tour, and that's without traffic. You'd be better off staying in a non-Marriott property (Sofitel Metropole or the less expensive HGI) and saving your cert for another use. If you go to central Vietnam, there are no Marriott properties. (La Residencia is dirt cheap and world class.)

Does saver inventory impact using a cert? The cert is based on category, let's say a Cat 6 cert. When a saver award is offered, the number of points needed to redeem become lower but the cat doesn't change, so a Cat 7 property would still be Cat 7, which wouldn't allow you to use a Cat 6 cert. I've never tried to do this, but just assumed it works this way. Anyone know for sure?