Apply For Chase Marriott Business + Personal Cards & Receive Up To 5 Nights & 77,000 Miles

Update: It looks like the 5 night packages are being restricted to timeshare owners only, so looks like you’ll be stuck with the seven night packages.

Chase has two offers on their Marriott cards worth considering:

If you meet the minimum spend requirements ($3,000 for personal & $5,000 for business) on both cards you’d earn a total of 195,500 Marriott points (this would also require you adding the authorized user on the personal card). You would also need to pay annual fees of $184 ($85 for personal and $99 for business). Now you could just use those Marriott points for Marriott stays, but one of the nice things about Marriott is their Flight + Hotel packages.

travel packages

Flight + Hotel Packages

Normally you’d need a minimum of 200,000 Marriott points to book any flight and hotel packages, but these packages all come with seven nights. Frequent Miler found out about five night packages, they are supposed to only be for Vacation Club owners but people have had success booking without being one of these (keep in mind this risk when following this strategy). The ‘award chart’ for this looks like this:

Rewards Category 5 Nights + 50k Miles 5 Nights + 70k Miles 5 Nights + 100k Miles 5 Nights + 120k Miles
Category 1-5 165k 185k 215k 235k
Category 6 180k 200k 230k 250k
Category 7 200k 220k 250k 270k
Category 8 230k 250k 280k 300k
Category 9 275k 295k 325k 345k

If you redeem for United miles, you also get an additional 10% bonus. You can redeem for miles with the following programs:

  • American Airlines
  • Delta
  • Southwest (points count towards companion pass)
  • Aeromexico
  • Air Canada
  • Alaska Airlines
  • British Airways
  • Copa Airlines
  • Frontier Airlines
  • GOL/Varig
  • Hawaiian Airlines
  • Iberia Airlines
  • Virgin Atlantic

If you had both cards then you’d have enough points for 5 nights + 50k miles and up to category 6 or 5 nights, 70k miles & up category 5. To be honest though, the real value is in the packages with 120,000 miles. For example you need an additional 70,000 Marriott points to score an additional 70,000 miles if you move from the lowest amount of miles to the highest (even better if you convert to United then it’s an additional 77,000 miles), that’s fantastic value. I would convert Marriott points to airline miles all day long at a 1:1 or better ratio. [Little update: In fact as you move up you’re always getting that extra 1 mile per 1 Marriott point, this is the same with the seven night packages as well]

Chasing Bigger Awards

You could achieve these better redemption by sharing points. According to Marriott, here are the rules:

A limit of 50,000 points per year may be transferred into or out of a member’s account. Members who are transferring points in order to satisfy a specific award may exceed the 50,000 limit up to the amount needed to satisfy the reservation.

There is a fee of $10USD (Gold and Platinum Elite members transfer for free). You need to contact Marriott Rewards Customer Support at 1-801-468-4000. Obviously this would require more credit card pulls and more paying annual fees, but it’s an option none the less.

Final Thoughts

By no means are these amazing deals that everybody should jump on immediately, there are a lot of issues (relatively high spend requirements, annual fees not waived, uncertainty about 5 night packages etc etc) surrounding this tactic but it is something I think merits thinking about at the very least.

I mean a 120,000 Southwest miles, Southwest companion pass and five nights at a category seven property for three hard pulls + annual fees doesn’t sound like a terrible deal to me. Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments, what else am I missing?

Also, I’m trying to write more about redeeming rewards. Are posts like these interesting (and useful) to readers? Let me know.

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13 Comments
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Dave
Dave (@guest_271078)
June 27, 2016 21:37

These posts are definitely useful

Cele
Cele (@guest_260809)
May 20, 2016 17:18

Yes, I’m very interested on these post.

As a side note I really love this blog from DOC.

Mike
Mike (@guest_260719)
May 20, 2016 12:03

Agree on the benefit of articles about redeeming… I feel like DOC does a great job with topics on earning rewards, but the redeeming sometimes can get tricky for newbies IMO.

Ken
Ken (@guest_260694)
May 20, 2016 10:54

Yes, please keep these types of posts coming.

brandon
brandon (@guest_260657)
May 20, 2016 08:23

I find these posts very useful. I find myself jumping on deals sometimes and then later trying to figure out what to do with the points, instead of having ideas in mind beforehand. Keep it up!

JDDTx
JDDTx (@guest_260534)
May 20, 2016 00:02

Love this post – very relevant and great coming from one of the few sources I trust.

Chris
Chris (@guest_260542)
May 20, 2016 00:46

JDDTx, What are the other sources you trust?

JDDTX
JDDTX (@guest_260691)
May 20, 2016 10:42

@Chris: I am skeptical by nature (given that I am a corporate lawyer by training – I used to help big companies write fine print that intentionally left out what they wanted to while giving a certain impression to the contrary) so other than DOC I have found almost nobody else that I truly trust (I like a person called Wandering Aramean – but his content is only occasionally relevant for me). I sometimes wish DOC would create a newsletter with all these titbits he alludes to sometimes (example – something about supercharging some Target/Ebay GC strategy) – and charge $120/year. I would definitely try it out – even 1 great tip a month would likely make it worth it. Maybe that would destroy the model that built the trust – which is not to push anything and be brutally honest in the OUR VERDICT section – but I can wish. I would certainly be glad to be parted from that $$ for DOC. /JB (Twitter: Jay_Bhat_TX)

s
s (@guest_260531)
May 19, 2016 23:50

Recent comments of Frequent Miler suggests that 5 nights packages are no more available for non-Vacation Club owners

Timothy
Timothy (@guest_260549)
May 20, 2016 01:13
  s

A second backup to this comment. I called and inquired about this and was completely shut down. I saw another post online where somebody who was Marriott PLATINUM who called multiple times couldn’t get it done.

This was a little known loophole that was sometimes allowed – once it got released publicly it appears it was shutdown quickly. That said – the 7 day packages are still a good deal.

Chris
Chris (@guest_260521)
May 19, 2016 22:57

I think the only issue signing up for both would be Chase’s rather stringent rules on applications/cards. The companion pass alone would be worth it.