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:
- Chase Marriott Card Back Up To 80,000 Points (+7,500 For Authorized User, AF Not Waived)
- Chase Marriott Business Card 100,000 Point Offer – Publicly Available
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.
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.
