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If you have the Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express credit card (formerly the SPG Business Amex), check your Amex Offers as you might have a spending offer that could be worth considering.
The Deals
- Earn 7,500 bonus points when spending $5,000 in a calendar month, or
- Earn 15,000 bonus points when spending $10,000 in a calendar month.
Key Terms
- Enrollment required by April 7, 2019.
- The maximum number points you can earn in association with this offer is 7,500 (or 15,000*) points per month or 45,000 (or 90,000*) points in aggregate over the entire length of the Offer Period.
- Eligible purchases on all Cards under a particular Card Account (including the Basic Card as well as any Additional or Employee Cards) are combined for the purpose of calculating the amount of spending that counts towards the Spend Requirement.
- Points will be credited to your loyalty member account 8-12 weeks after you meet the Spend Requirement during the Offer Period.
- Limit one offer per Card Account.
- Eligible purchases do NOT include fees or interest charges, balance transfers, cash advances, purchases of traveler’s checks, purchases or reloading of prepaid cards, purchases of gift cards, person-to-person payments, or purchases of any cash equivalents. Eligible purchases to meet the purchase requirement are for goods and services minus returns and other credits.
*Refers to the 15,000 bonus point/$10,000 spending offer.
Quick Thoughts
This targeted offer works out to be a bonus of 1.5 Marriott Bonvoy points per dollar for every $5,000 or $7,500 of spend, depending on which version of the offer you receive.
If you were to enroll in the offer today, there are 9 calendar months in which you could earn the bonus points. Note that you’re limited to 45,000 or 90,000 bonus points though, so you’ll max out this offer if completing the minimum spend requirement during 6 calendar months.
There’s a spending bonus available on the personal Marriott Bonvoy Amex, although in that post I explained that it probably wasn’t worth taking advantage of. This offer on the business version of the card is a little more intriguing than that one for three reasons.
The first is that the spend requirements are different. With the offer on the personal card, you have to spend $25,000. This business card offer is better as you only have to spend in $5,000 or $10,000 increments in order to earn the bonus points.
The second reason is that you’re effectively earning 1.5 bonus points per dollar with this offer on the business cards, rather than 1 bonus point per dollar with the personal card offer.
Thirdly, the Marriott Business Amex has a few bonus categories. If you were to spend $5,000/$10,000 per month in the following categories, you’d be earning 5.5 points per dollar:
- US restaurants
- US gas stations
- Wireless telephone services purchased directly from US service providers
- US purchases for shipping
If you have a lot of spend in any of those categories, earning 5.5x Marriott Bonvoy points might be better than you’re getting elsewhere.
Having said all that, you’ll get a better return on $5,000/$10,000 of spend per month by putting those purchases towards earning signup bonuses on new cards. It’s therefore not going to be worth taking advantage of this offer unless it doesn’t impact on your ability to make minimum spend requirements on new cards.
One slight downside is that you’re limited to one bonus per calendar month. Let’s say you have the $5,000/7,500 point offer and needed to make a $10,000 payment, perhaps for taxes, home renovations, etc. You’d only earn 7,500 bonus points due to the limit of one bonus per month.
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there’s no way I can, and I suspect most others, will be able to meet these bonus requirements without purchasing gift cards. Simon is known not to code as “eligible” purchase by AM$X and the purchase I just made on GC mall coded as “GIFTCARDS”. Curious to wait and see if it’ll count towards this bonus. If not, I don’t think doing grocery stores GC is worth the effort and cost, at least for this offer.
Oh, so this is only really .5 more than what it’s supposed to be had Marriott not devalued the earning rate of the former SPG Biz card. I might ask my sister to call and cancel her Biz card. Last time she did they offered her 10000 for spending $1000. This might be worth it if combined with a retention bonus.
Dang, I just switched all my spend over to the Ink Business Unlimited from my SPG Business Amex. I was targeted for the $10k/month spend, which is about as much as I spend on a monthly basis, so I guess I’m switching back!!
Was not targeted for this one but signed up for the other offer on the personal card
Didn’t I see a post a couple days ago that Amex is letting everybody sign up for the “old earning rate”? Basically gives you back the 3 Marriott Points per Dollar through the end of the Calendar Year? Was that the Personal Card only?
If it is also for Business, and stacked that with this bonus offer you’d be at 4.5 Marriott Points per Dollar spent (anywhere). After 6 months you’d have 90,000 points, plus (60,000 x 3) = 180,000 points = 270,000 Bonvoy Points, plus 20 nights towards status? Isn’t there a “bonus night” at 60,000 spend as well? That’s kind of appealing…
The 3x is only on the personal card and that bonus point is only earned when spending $25,000 by the end of the year.
I must have missed that news, can you please post a reference if possible? Is that a separate offer from this one?
Register your Card by April 7, 2019 and earn up to 100K bonus points
You can earn 25,000 bonus points after you spend $25,000 in qualifying purchases on your registered Marriott BonvoyTM American Express® Card between the time you complete registration and December 31, 2019. This offer is available up to four times with a maximum amount of 100,000 bonus points after spending $100,000. Registration period ends on April 7, 2019. Terms and Conditions apply.
Yep, that’s the offer I’m referring to.
I am, however. going to put $25k on the personal card, then upgrade to the Brilliant on 4.24. A chance to both earn 3x & then apply that spend towards the $75k Plat req on the Brilliant.
Great idea
I upgraded to the Brilliant 10 days ago, and the 25k point for 25K spend offer is still on my card.
I registered. There’s no penalty for not getting the bonus, and 3.25 pts per dollar on unbonused spend and 4.25 points per $ on restaurant spend and 7.25 points per $ on Marriott spend is worth while. (The extra 0.25 points because I need to spend $5,000 by May 15 to get the 100k point bonus they were offering for the upgrade, so I need ‘only’ $20k spending to get the extra 25k points).
If I were in the market for a new credit card the calculation might be different, but right now I’m more in the shedding credit card stage than adding still another one.
Thank you very much for the DP, Jim, am VERY glad to hear the 25k offer carries over. That means the whole $75k spend to maintain Plat (in my case) can be had at a minumum .0315 earn rate (valued at .009). I will take that gladly!
Good offer on non-bonused spend (1.5 + 2 = 3.5 points), dep on how you value MRs these days. Better than the old 3 points, at least.
Just confirming this spend bonus is based on calendar month and not billing statement month?
As above, the post is right that it is calendar month-based. Here’s the terms:
To be eligible to earn the 7,500 Marriott Bonvoy points, you must enroll your Marriott Bonvoy BusinessTM American Express Card in the offer by 4/7/19 and use it to spend at least $5,000 in eligible purchases in a **calendar month** (“Spend Requirement”) during the Offer Period. The Offer Period is the period of time between the date on which you enrolled and 10/7/19. The maximum number points you can earn in association with this offer is 7,500 points per month or 45,000 points in aggregate over the entire length of the Offer Period.