Marriott announced their latest MegaBonus promotion a month ago, but they’ve recently made a couple of changes to the promotion. One change is positive and can earn you thousands more bonus points, but the other restricts how many bonus points you’ll earn from their 29 Ways To Stay game.
First off, the positive change. The MegaBonus promotion already offered 2,000 bonus points per stay on all stays of two nights or more, along with 1,000 bonus points for each Marriott Rewards brand you stay at, starting with your second brand.
You’ll now earn an additional 10,000 bonus points when staying at 10 different brands during the promotion period, or 29,000 bonus points when staying at all 29 different brands. Neither of those will be helpful for most people, but if you’re traveling for work in a large city and are happy to hotel-hop every night, the lower threshold at least should be achievable.
The negative change relates to their 29 Ways To Stay game. When originally writing about the MegaBonus promotion, I’d noted that the odds listed in the terms suggested you’d earn 1,900 bonus points if playing the game every day. A significant portion of those points would’ve come from the 50% chance you had of winning 50 bonus points every day. The change is that you’ll now only earn 50 bonus points once, making the game less rewarding.
The 29 Ways To Stay game started more than a week late, so Marriott has extended its end date to November 8, 2018. Despite Marriott removing the chance to earn 50 bonus points each day, I’ll still be playing every day in the (likely vain) hope of earning one of the larger prizes. It only takes a minute or two to play every day and there are enough points on offer that I’m willing to spend a total of about an hour over the course of the month to get the maximum number of entries.
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[…] Remember that today [1/7/19] is the last day to register for this promotion. Also see our update about this promotion with further […]
Still can’t register for this. Fails if I go through the promo page, doesn’t show on my account for whatever reason.
Where do they say “you’ll now only earn 50 bonus points once” in the terms https://29ways.marriott.com/en-us/rules? It says “Limit one (1) Instant Win Prize per person, per day”. You must be right though, I won 50 the first time, and nothing ever since. I think the odds being 1:2 is a lie.
That’s strange. That wording is indeed saying ‘per day’, but I’m sure I saw it somewhere without the ‘per day’ wording after DoC mentioned it the other day.
Stephen, you’re having a laugh surely. Not a single person on earth will hit 29 brands in 3 months. It would involve a trip to Africa for a start. 290,000 points and 2 years to do it …. more interesting.
Would you chase 20,000 SkyTeam miles for flying all 20 airlines in 3 months? Thought not.
I agree – that’s why I said neither bonus would be helpful for most people, but that the lower threshold (i.e. 10k points for 10 brands) might be achievable for someone willing to hotel-hop on someone else’s dime.
Maybe, but for just 10k points ($80 value)..it’s pathetic to chase 10 brands…
If that was the only incentive then it probably wouldn’t be worth it. The 10k points are in addition to the other bonus points on offer with the promotion though.
If you stayed at 10 brands and those stays were all 2+ nights, you’d earn 39,000 bonus points, making hotel-hopping and brand-chasing more worthwhile.
I’m traveling in China for 2 months. Usually have been staying at relatively cheap JinJiang chinese brand. I wanted some nice rooms so started at a Shanghai ritz which was a great price about $140, four nights, then a marriott in guangzhou 4 nights about the same, then aloft in gz 4 nights (but I used points). did one night at a fairfield, have upcoming 4 nights at a courtyard. Final night I’ll do at a new brand. I registered for the promotion and those 3000 or 1000 points aren’t to bad. All of the sudden I realized maybe I should be going for platinum. I’m getting 6000 – 9000 points on these stays. I booked the aloft for 5 nights @ 30000 points (which wiped me out) but with that stay I have to value the points much higher than .008. I calculated about .0125. Now before I leave china it just happened to work out I’ll have 7 brands and 45 nights. I need the 50 nights so I might try for 10 brands. But won’t waste money doing it. Just want show that some of these promotions can be fairly good. I also use a citi prestige 4th night hotel free credit card. Some 4 night stay’s feel like almost like I’m paying for 2 nights with the points.
Marriott is run by a bunch of fucking idiots. they give away 1,000 pointe every sunday last year for answering a NFL question but they won’t give away more than 50 points for this promo. and this is after they pissed off almost every elite they have? see ya assholes, hello hilton and hyatt.
How do you know there are any points left? I got 50 first day and my wife got 1000. We are done.
I won 3,000 points on day 2 and got out of the game
Did your 3000 points get posted yet? As of today, mine is not posted yet!!
Wow what a way to piss off customers to save a few lousy points. I know this seems petty but it’s not the 50 points a day that is the bad part is the lack of trust and mishandling. It’s like they turned into Wyndham or something.
Marriott has gone from bad to worse. I too wondered what had happened after just getting a “Thank you” after playing the game. I’m staying away from Marriott and all my reservations for the rest of the year are a combination of Hyatt & Hilton. Still trying to figure out how to spend my 7-night Marriott Cat 1-5 (actually, Cat 1-4 now) travel package.
But good luck to you and I hope you win. 😉
I stopped playing Saturday (Sunday for my sister’s account).
Even that mega bonus promo is not mega points exciting
I noticed this after my first play. Was unsure if they weren’t just displaying the points or if my browser was acting up.
Marriott making sudden changes that are bad for the customer in 2018. Who would have thought?