Marriott Bonvoy Bold card “enhancements” coming. You know what that means.

enhancement
[ en-hans-muhnt, -hahns- ]

noun
the state or quality of being elevated, heightened, or increased, as in quality, degree, intensity, or value

I think someone needs to have a word with Dictionary.com because their definition of ‘enhancement’ appears to be wholly incorrect based on the enhancements that are coming on the Marriott Bonvoy Bold card.

As you can see from the screenshot above, Chase/Marriott state that there’ll be ‘new enhancements coming soon’, but then go on to state that they’ll be removing existing benefits on July 11, 2024 which doesn’t sound like much of an enhancement.

Elite Night Credits

At the moment, Marriott Bonvoy Bold cardholders get 15 elite night credits posted to their account every calendar year which is enough to earn Silver status. For new cardholders from July 11, 2024 and existing cardholders from January 1, 2025, they’ll earn 5 elite night credits every calendar year as well as Silver status.

On the face of it, that doesn’t sound like a material difference seeing as you’ll end up with Silver status either way. However, the enhancement devaluation here is that you’ll be worse off if you’re trying to earn a status level higher than Silver.

For example, let’s say you want to earn Platinum status with Marriott Bonvoy. With the old version of the Bold card which gave 15 elite night credits each year, you’d only need 35 more elite nights to get the requisite 50 nights for Platinum status. However, with only 5 elite night credits being offered going forward, you’ll need to earn 45 more elite nights which is a tougher ask.

Spending Categories

At the moment, the Bonvoy Bold card earns 2x points on travel purchases. From July 11, 2024, travel purchases will only earn 1 point per dollar. They’ll apparently be replacing that with 2x points in the following categories:

• Groceries
• Rideshare services
• Internet, cable & phone services
• Select food delivery services
• Select streaming services

To be fair to Chase and Marriott, replacing one category earning 2x with five categories earning 2x could reasonably be classed as an enhancement. That said, there are so many other credit cards offering bonused spend in at least one of those categories, or discounted gift cards being available for those retailers and/or services, that paying for them with your Marriott Bonvoy Bold card doesn’t really make sense.

~

Something I should highlight is that although the removal of the 15 elite night credits and 2x earnings on travel purchases is listed on the landing page for the Bonvoy Bold card, the revised benefits aren’t listed there that I can see. Doctor of Credit has listed those changes though and so I’m assuming that they’ve seen those listed elsewhere, but they don’t seem to be mentioned in card’s offer details, nor on the Reddit thread he links to.

Assuming that the elite night credits awarded on this card do get slashed from 15 per year to 5, I’m struggling to see any reason to keep a Bonvoy Bold card versus upgrading it to a Boundless or Ritz-Carlton card. Sure, the Bold card has no annual fee, but if you were keeping the card because its previous 15 elite night credits made a material difference to your ability to earn higher elite status, I’d have thought paying the $95 annual fee on the Boundless card and getting a 35k free night certificate would make more sense considering that card will continue offering 15 elite night credits after July 11.

h/t Doctor of Credit

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