The amount of notice given. Marriott gave months of notice and allowed you to book reservations even if you didn't have the points at the time.

At AA or Delta and some other hotel chains the notice was none or very limited. There is a reason they call them Skypesos now. :rolleyes:

Sorry to revive this old thread, but I am wondering if anyone has more recent experience with the above statement. I'd rather post here than start a new one. Does have anyone successfully redeemed a Cat 5 package, then converted it to a higher Category? I have enough points to get a Cat 5 package with the max of miles -which I need, so I can book flights before availability runs out- but I'm planning a stay at a Cat 9 hotel (hopefully, I'll have the 110k extra points by mid October).

actually your post belongs in this thread
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...-packages.html
as the one you posted in is NOT related to your question.........
IMO if MRs still allows "paying" an increase in points to increase the 7-night portion of a TP it's previously been limited to 1-catagory, not 4 as you propose to do, but for a CORRECT answer to your question, best just to call MRs and ask them................

Thanks for moving it to the correct forum. Apologies.

I have paid the difference in points to upgrade from a category 6 to a category 8 travel package.

Thank you! I just called today and confirmed it is possible to do this. I wanted to buy a Cat 6 package then pay the 90k point difference to upgrade to a Cat 9 and they said it's doable.

I'm a little bummed though. I couldn't do it yet -I'm 2.5k points short! I'll have to wait until next week...

If u are in hurry, you can buy 3 K points directly from Marriott.

Thanks for the suggestion, gv111. I'm going to wait on it. My stay this week will give me the points I need. Also, I'll probably end up buying some UA miles to top the miles I get with the package and I'm trying to keep the spend to a minimum in this redemption.

Marriott -7 night awards?
 

For an upcoming trip I have a choice of 5 nite or 7 nite award. With the 7 night award I believe you can do 100k pts to 100k United miles.. Just seeing if others believe the 7 night award for the mile conversion is the better way to go? I am indifferent on how many nights to stay

5 night award would be 40k pts a night (booked before cat increase)
7 nights award +132k pt would be 420 pts a night (if you assume 40k for each night, then 280k pts for room AND 140k Marriott for 132k United.

the pros/cons of TPs over 5-night awards has been discussed before -
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...-packages.html

personally, I opt for the TP as my flights out of BKK are very limited on UA flights (only to NRT) and none to AU/NZ and/or EU........

I know lots here think travel packages are one of the best redemption options.

In the example below that may not be the case.

Cash in 200,000(category 1-5) points for 7 nights & 50,000 aeroplan points....
that means 7 nights = 150,000 points. Therefore no discount on what it would normally cost to redeem 7 nights.
At the moment aeroplan has bonuses of up to 25% when transfering points from Marriott. 50,000 Marriott converts to 60,000 aeroplan.
Hertz has 0 value to me. I will get a better rate elsewhere or not need a vehicle.
Anything I'm missing?

Just piling on the Hertz cert, I find that useless as well.. absolutely certifiably useless

These travel packages only makesenseif there are bonus miles involved such as a 100 % bonus for unto 60000 miles ( Marriott to US Air ).

Time to bring it back !

I doubt it will be brought back. Happened every spring for the last 3+ years. But DM is ending with the merge. Likely around January according to the US Airways forum. Everyone will be converting to AAdvantage.

I do see great value in the travel packages. 1:1 MR points for airline miles plus the hotel stay.

I guess I'm missing something here.

I think your point is that with a TP award you are "essentially" converting 50K points into 60K miles. Correct? If so, note that a straight transfer of points to miles would normally require 140K MR points to get 50K miles (or 60K with the bonus.) So the TP award provides a fairly nice savings considering you are getting both the hotel award and the miles.

Also, you picked the lowest miles option for a TP award. The big benefit of this award is getting the airline miles at a 1-to-1 points-to-miles ratio. Thus the biggest benefit would be seen when converting 270K points into 120K miles (145K with the 25K bonus.)

If you tried to do a straight points to miles convertion, it would take about 350K MR points to get that same 120K miles. And don't forget that a straight convertion does NOT includes any hotel award certs. So the top end TP award saves 80K points PLUS throws in a nice 7 night hotel award.