Last month, Marriott announced the extension of elite status and free night certificates. All certificates scheduled to expire before 6/30/22 were to be extended until that date. Good news: some of those certificates are showing the updated expiration date already. Marriott appears to be rolling this out in batches, but for those who certs have been extended it means the ability to now use them to book as far out as June 30th, 2022.
The original planned extension and plans for the new extension
Back in April, Marriott had extended many free night certificates to expire on January 3, 2022. Many of us are still sitting on those previously-extended certificates waiting for a good opportunity to use them.
Greg had success getting one such certificate extended for another year. Then, with time winding down on the clock (and I’m guessing with a desire not to keep extending others’ certificates for mid-summer 2022 travel), Marriott announced that it would extend all certificates set to expire before June 30, 2022 until that date (including those previously-extended certificates with January 3rd expirations and all those scheduled to expire in the first half of next year). That’s kind of frustrating for those who would like to book summertime (July-August) travel, but good news for those who were about to lose certificates unused.
The extension was scheduled to be reflected on certificates in December. Those sitting on certificates that have been showing an expiration date of 1/3/22 have been stuck waiting until December to be able to book stays beyond January 3rd (since the certificates can not be used to book a stay beyond the expiration date).
Extensions are now rolling out
An eagle-eyed reader in our Frequent Miler Insiders group noticed that her due-to-expire-January-3rd free night certificates have already been extended through June. This means that she can now use them to book stays through June 30, 2021.
Apparently, this is still rolling out and not yet completed. My wife’s free night certificates (one of which was set to expire January 3rd and the other later in January) have already been extended to June 30, 2022.
However, I have not been quite so lucky. My Suite Night Awards have been extended to June 30, 2022. However, none of my free night certificates or Ritz Club Upgrades have been extended yet.
This isn’t being rolled out based on status as my wife only has Gold status and I have Titanium status. I suppose Marriott probably has some method to the madness, but I’m not sure it would be possible to figure it out.
Some will surely find this unfair as folks like my wife will potentially be able to scoop up award availability while people like me are left on the sidelines waiting. On the other hand, those who can book now will no doubt be happy to have Marriott deliver on the extension even earlier than promised. I expect we’re probably looking at a lag of days rather than weeks and that a lot of members won’t even notice the extensions have happened ahead of schedule.
I thought it was worth reporting this so our readers can be aware and those with already-extended certificates can now start making plans. Thanks be to Melissa in Frequent Miler Insiders for noticing and taking the time to alert us!
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Any chance that they will reextend it until the end of the year?
Hoping but unlikely. I have 6 certs expiring 06-30 and too much going on to be able to use any of them.
Mine were extended a week ago.
DP: of 3 family accts managed, all 7 free nights are extended to 6/30/22; 3 were 35K night-ers, the other 4 were 25K.
I’ve got one Jan 3 that has yet to be extended.
awesome we had two that expired on Jan 22 and those moved to June 22 – perfect since did not have a booking to make yet and definitely will by then.
I’d love to do some speculative reservations, but actually I’m waiting until the
certificates+15K points feature is rolled out. I have a few 50K certs, but a bunch of 35K certs which could put me in some pretty nice properties with an extra 15K tacked on. Plus, with three Marriott CC AF’s coming up soon, I’ll have even more certs!
Mine were all extended a few days ago.
Including the 7-night packages.
Yeah, I have left two 7-night partial packages I originally got in 2017, extended over and over and they just got extended until June. They had told me some months ago that there was absolutely no way they would get extended again.
Any idea if we will be able to add 15,000 points to these package certificates?
Yeah, I logged into Marriott on Thursday (day before yesterday) and all the certs in both P1’s and P2’s account had been extended.
Leaves Hyatt as the odd man out refusing to extend certs.
And some IHG certs
mine Hyatt was extended in Aug for 6 months