Marriott Rewards Advantage is Free Nights Redemption Chart
Marriott Rewards competitive advantage over Hilton HHonors, Hyatt Gold Passport, IHG Priority Club, and Starwood Preferred Guest is their “Free Nights Redemption Chart” which offers a progressively increasing per night discount for multiple night hotel stays using points. The difference with the Marriott Rewards table is the points per night cost decreases for every extra night of a hotel stay using points beginning with 2-night stays.
Marriott San Francisco
Savings Example Using Marriott Rewards Points for a Multiple Night Stay:
Marriott Rewards Category 5 Hotels cost 25,000 points for one room night using points.
2-night stay = 46,000 points. Per night rate drops to 23,000 points for a free night when you book a two-night stay using points. Spending 46,000 points for two nights is an 8% discount from 50,000 points.
Important Difference of Marriott Rewards — The other major hotel programs do not discount the per night cost for a two-night stay.
A Crowne Plaza stay at 25,000 points for one night will cost 50,000 points for two nights using hotel points.
A 5-night stay at a Marriott Rewards Category 5 hotel using points costs 95,000 points. The cost per night on a 5-night Marriott Rewards Category 5 hotel = 19,000 points per free night. This is a 24% savings on the per night cost for a five night hotel stay.
The higher category Marriott Rewards hotels, Category 5, 6, and 7 hotels, for longer stays of five to seven nights provide a per night discount over 30% and some reward stays approach a 40% discount when using points. This is one of the highest discounts in the hotel industry for upscale and luxury high-end hotel properties when using hotel points for free stays.
Starwood Preferred Guest has the 5th Night Free Award Stay which gives a 20% discount on the per night rate, but SPG does not have discounted point rates for stays less than five nights using hotel points.
Marriott Rewards Redemption Chart
source: http://www.marriott.com/rewards/usepoints/hotelrew.mi
Color codes show the relative per night discounts for longer stays.
Percentages shown are per night discounts for an award stay based on per night cost for a 1-night award. The larger percentages indicate more savings in points when booking a multi-night award using Marriott Rewards hotel points.
Marriott Rewards discounts the per night rate by 30% or more for cat 5, 6, and 7 hotels on 6-night and 7-night award reservations.
Marriott Rewards discounts are 20% to 27% on per night rates for Category 5, 6, and 7 hotels when booking 4-night or 5-night award stays using points.
Other Hotel chains are not as generous as Marriott Rewards for shorter hotel stays using points.
Hilton HHonors requires a minimum 6-night stay before any discount kicks in on the per night redemption rate using points. VIP-only awards for 6-night or longer hotel stays are available to Hilton HHonors elite members. Elite membership is a relatively small hurdle to qualify for Silver elite status and access to VIP-Only Reward stays. Hilton HHonors Silver VIP requires just four Hilton-family hotel stays per year.
HHonors Category 6 hotel is 40,000 points per night. A 6-night VIP award for a Category 6 hotel is 175,000 points, a 27% points discount. Marriott’s comparable 6-night, Category 6 award is only 120,000 points and offers a 33% discount on the per night rate. Hilton allows the member to earn 15 points per $1 hotel spending with Points&Points earning preference. These awards will take about the same amount of hotel spending to earn the award.
HHonors Category 6 hotel is 40,000 points per night. A 4-night award for a HHonors Category 6 hotel is 160,000 points, no discount on the per night points for a four-night HHonors stay.
Marriott Rewards Category 6 hotel for a four-night stay is 95,000 points.
The Marriott Rewards member is likely to earn a four night stay with less overall spending. Hilton HHonors Diamond elites will have more equally matched earning power due to HHonors 50% elite bonus for Diamonds compared to only a 30% elite bonus for Marriott Rewards Platinum members.
Update Oct. 4, 2008: HHonors American Express credit card HHonors 4-night AXON award discount. An astute reader pointed out the option for Hilton HHonors members with a co-branded American Express HHonors credit card to redeem HHonors points for a 4-night AXON award at HHonors Category 5 or Category 6 hotels for 125,000 points.
I overlooked the AXON hotel stay option in this analysis. I have a post from May 15, 2008 about the HHonors American Express AXON awards. The HHonors American Express card, along with SPG AmEx, also came out on top in earning potential in my analysis of hotel co-branded credit cards in this post “Comparison of Hotel Loyalty Program Affinity Credit Cards“.
Gary Leff wrote about the best bonus points offer he has seen from HHonors American Express on his “View from the Wing” blog in this October 4, 2008 post .
Hyatt Gold Passport
Gold Passport does not offer a discount for multiple night stays using hotel points.
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) Priority Club Rewards
Priority Club Rewards does not offer a discount on the per night rate for multiple night stays.
Priority Club offers PointBreaks for select hotels at 5,000 points per night. This is a great discount, however, like Hilton Point Stretcher and Marriott PointSavers, these special offers are limited to a small subset of participating hotels within the chain.
Starwood Preferred Guest
SPG has a 5th Night Free award. A minimum 5-night stay is required to get a discount on points for a hotel stay. The 5th Night Free award lets SPG members stay five nights for the price of a four night hotel stay using points.
SPG has Cash & Points awards which can be a substantial discount, but these awards have limited hotel participation and are capacity controlled.
The best value for your Marriott Rewards points is to redeem points for longer stays. Marriott Rewards is a good program to build up points over time and take a long vacation on points.
Marriott Rewards has great value for stays between 2 to 4 nights compared to the other major hotel loyalty programs.
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