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Old Jul 11, 2007 | 8:45 am
  #1  
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Using reward points

I have just joined the Marriott Reward Programme with the purchase of a timeshare in Marbella, as part of the deal I now have around 700,000 reward points. I was just wondering how to value them or consider using them, what are they worth?
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Old Jul 11, 2007 | 9:12 am
  #2  
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Welcome SlackBladder! There are a myriad of threads, on this forum, about the value of points. Use the "Search" function and you find many opinions.
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Old Jul 11, 2007 | 10:45 am
  #3  
 
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Basically use your points only to redeem travel packages with the maximum possible amount of miles. Second best is use points for hotel stays less than a week long. Forget about the rest of the catalogue. Marriott sells points at $12.5 per 1,000 for your reference. That's a conservative figure as you can make them yield much more.
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Old Jul 11, 2007 | 12:52 pm
  #4  
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Welcome to FT SlackBladder. As JTG mentions a search can be very helpful. I searched the Marriott forum with "value of points" as the search string and here are some good threads I found:

Devaluation - Did Marriott changes Category levels at 500+ hotels on 3/2?
When to Use Points/Value of Points
Value of Points
Vacation Clubs-Great use of Points!

There are more, but the above are some good ones to start with.
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Old Jul 11, 2007 | 1:50 pm
  #5  
 
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Probably the best value is the air/hotel packages. For 235K points you get 120K miles in a host of different airline programs and a 7 night stay in a cat 1-5 hotel. You don't have to use both at the same time/trip.

you can use the miles anyway you want: free flight, upgrades, etc.

The hotel portion can be "upgraded" later to a cat 6 or 7 if you decide to stay at one of thoese (15K more points for cat 6 and 35K more points for Cat 7).

The hotel certificate is good for a year, can be transferred to someone else (makes a great wedding gift) and can be extended for a year (or more).

You can even redeposit the hotel portion, although you only get 45K miles for it. Better than nothing if you don't use.

This is the only award I ever request, and I've been through 10 million point so far (of course, I used a lot of those points on even better awards that were available in the past...)

Using the points this way - I value marriott reward points at least 1.5 cents per point and sometimes 2 cents or more.

Billy
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Old Jul 11, 2007 | 6:27 pm
  #6  
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Originally Posted by Delta3MM
Probably the best value is the air/hotel packages. For 235K points you get 120K miles in a host of different airline programs and a 7 night stay in a cat 1-5 hotel. You don't have to use both at the same time/trip.

Using the points this way - I value marriott reward points at least 1.5 cents per point and sometimes 2 cents or more.
Ditto to both of the above. Travel packages are the way to go. And I value my points at around 1.5 to 2.0 cents each.
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Old Jul 12, 2007 | 9:34 am
  #7  
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Excellent threads thanks for the info!
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Old Jul 12, 2007 | 10:02 am
  #8  
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Originally Posted by Delta3MM
The hotel certificate is good for a year, can be transferred to someone else (makes a great wedding gift) and can be extended for a year (or more).
According to MarriottConcierge, the hotel portion of a travel package can be extended indefinitely (a year at a time). I have one I've extended twice already.
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