Points Reckoning
It’s been a busy couple of months for anyone paying attention to the Marriott and subsidiaries’ award programs. Starwood Preferred Guest and The Ritz-Carlton Rewards programs have ceased existing as standalone programs. Much like Hilton Honors and IHG Rewards Club, Marriott offers a very reliable redemption experience. Also like the aforementioned, we’re reducing our usual reduction factor of 25% to 10. However, unlike it’s hotel peers, Marriott offers some nice upside, and one is not stuck with $0.005/point awards. After this month’s reckoning was completed, we assigned an ACRV of $0.0010 to each Marriott Rewards point.
| Current | Previous Period | Change | |
| 30 Day Average | $0.0103 | $0.0072 | $0.0031 |
| 60 Day Average | $0.0097 | $0.0074 | $0.0023 |
| ACRV | $0.0100 | $0.0073 | $0.0027 |
| 30 Day Non-Zero | $0.0143 | $0.0080 | $0.0063 |
| 60 Day Non-Zero | $0.0119 | $0.0092 | $0.0027 |
| Average Non-Zero | $0.0131 | $0.0086 | $0.0045 |
| Award Availability | 85.00% | 95.00% | -10.00% |
Sadly, this month, there were three data points with no award availability. All at Ritz-Carlton properties. Coincidence, I doubt it. We feel the same about this as we do about any other blacked-out date. We hate it. The fact that a hotel chain would say they’re off-limits to their most loyal customers really annoys us.
The chart above tells us that you’re quite likely to redeem your Marriott Reward points for $0.0131/each, give or take a cent. Our standard deviation is $0.0088, this means that, theoretically, 68% of award redemptions should occur between $0.0043 and $0.0219.
| Redemption Count | ||
| Exceptional | >$0.06 | 0 |
| Great | $0.04-0.06 | 0 |
| Good | $0.03-0.04 | 2 |
| Respectable | $0.02-0.03 | 0 |
| Acceptable | $0.01-0.02 | 7 |
| Terrible | <$0.01 | 8 |
| No Availability | 3 | |
The chart above looks decent, for a hotel chain. If it were an airline, it would be terrible. Our best for the month came from a week-long stay at The Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park. This was offered for $7,657.63 in cash or $1,500 plus 180,000 points. The latter providing a redemption value of 3.42¢ per point. That’s actually quite fantastic for a hotel point that’s not part of the former SPG program.
Unlike Hilton and IHG, Marriott provides a potentially legitimate opportunity to transfer a credit card point for some solid value. However, we would still recommend keeping Ultimate Rewards right where one earned them, at Chase. At least until one has a specific, high value redemption in mind.
Compared to it’s Peers
For more information about how we value airline/hotel and other award currencies, please visit our valuation method and changelog pages.
