Points Reckoning
Updated February 20th, 2019
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. We’ve now got Bonvoy.
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 1.11¢ to each Marriott Bonvoy point.
| Current | Previous Period | $ Change | % Change | |
| 30 Day Average | 1.03¢ | 1.03¢ | +0.00¢ | +0% |
| 90 Day Average | 1.20¢ | 0.97¢ | +0.23¢ | +23% |
| ACRV | 1.11¢ | 1.00¢ | +0.11¢ | +11% |
| 30 Day Non-Zero | 1.15¢ | 1.43¢ | -0.28¢ | -20% |
| 90 Day Non-Zero | 1.33¢ | 1.19¢ | +0.14¢ | +12% |
| Average Non-Zero | 1.24¢ | 1.31¢ | -0.07¢ | -6% |
| Award Availability | 100% | 85% | n/a | +15% |
The chart above tells us that you’re quite likely to redeem your Marriott Reward points for 1.24¢ each, give or take a cent. Our standard deviation is .47¢, this means that, theoretically, 68% of award redemptions should occur between .77 and 1.7¢.
| Redemption Count | ||
| Exceptional | >$0.06 | 0 |
| Great | $0.04-0.06 | 0 |
| Good | $0.03-0.04 | 0 |
| Respectable | $0.02-0.03 | 1 |
| Acceptable | $0.01-0.02 | 13 |
| Terrible | <$0.01 | 6 |
| No Availability | 0 | |
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 $8,623.81 in cash or $21 plus 300,000 points. The latter providing a redemption value of 2.87¢ 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.
