In 2022, Marriott abandoned award charts. Previously, if you knew a hotel’s category, you also knew how many points it would require for a free night, at least within a range from off-peak to peak pricing. That was helpful for planning for future stays and it meant that when cash prices were unusually high, you knew you could get great value from your points since the point prices were capped. Surprisingly, all of that is still true if you know where to look. Seal the Deal Travels has discovered how to find each hotel’s secret category and they’ve put together an accompanying award chart. With just a little effort you can discover each hotel’s award price range…
Overview
Seal the Deal Travels has discovered that Marriott still assigns a category to each hotel. Further, they’ve found that most categories have strict limits to how many points can be charged for a night. Seal the Deal Travels used this information to create an award chart that shows current Marriott award pricing. The emphasis on “current” is important: Marriott changes these pricing bands once or twice a year.
The basic approach to finding a hotel’s award price range is as follows:
- Identify the hotel’s secretly assigned category
- Check Seal the Deal Travels‘ award chart (also shown in this post) to see the award price range.
One of the reasons that this technique is useful, is that it can give you a good idea of what can be done with your Marriott Free Night Certificates. You can use the secret award chart to see which category hotels can always be booked, sometimes booked or never booked with your certs (keeping in mind that you can top-off each cert with up to 15,000 points).
How to find a hotel’s category (except for Ritz-Carlton & Reserve)
Seal the Deal Travels shows this updated approach to finding a hotel’s category:
- Log into your account on Marriott.com
- Search for a reservation at a hotel of interest
- Go to either the rooms listing or calendar view of the hotel
- Go to a home page of the hotel by clicking on the hotel’s logo which should open a new tab to its homepage
- Right click and View Page Source on the hotel’s homepage
- Find on Page: “prop_rewards_category_level”
- Make sure the property name matches with what you’re looking for
Once you are viewing the HTLM page source, simply search (Ctrl-F) for “prop_rewards_category_level”. In this example, the hotel I was looking at is category 6:
For Ritz-Carlton & Reserve properties, please see Seal the Deal Travels post for instructions.
Secret Award Chart
The following award price ranges were discovered and documented by Seal the Deal Travels. It is possible that some of the details aren’t 100% accurate since the values were based on what was available at the time that they searched. For example, the low-end award prices may be off because they may not have found a hotel priced at the lowest amount possible for every category that they searched. Additionally, it is very likely that Marriott will change these details in the future. For now, though, here’s what we have:
| Category | Minimum/Night | Maximum/Night |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5,000 | 18,000 |
| 2 | 10,000 | 28,000 |
| 3 | 15,000 | 36,500 |
| 4 | 22,000 | 55,000 |
| 5 | 35,000 | 76,000 |
| 6 | 40,000 | 88,000 |
| 7 | 50,000 | 105,000 |
| 8 | 52,000 | 140,000 |
| 9 | 88,000 | 152,000 |
| Exceptions | Â | Â |
| • St Regis & Ritz Carlton Maldives | 108,000 | 198,000 |
| • JW Marriott Masai Mara | 192,000 | 236,000 |
| • Ritz-Carlton Reserve Zadun | 125,000 | 212,000 |
| • St Regis Red Sea | 125,000 | 212,000 |
| • Ritz-Carlton Reserve Dorado Beach | 163,000 | 254,000 |
| • Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve | 187,500 | 327,500 |
| • North Island, Seychelles | 443,000 | 605,000 |
Analysis
The secret award chart can be used to evaluate the usefulness of Marriott’s various Free Night Certificates. Common certificate values are 35K, 40K, 50K, and 85K and each can be topped off with up to 15K points.
35K Certs: These can be used on properties costing up to 50,000 points per night. All category 1-3 hotels can be booked with these certs. Additionally, category 4-6 hotels can be booked with these certs when priced at the lower end of the range. And category 7 hotels can be booked when priced at the absolute lowest end of the range.
40K Certs: These can be used on properties costing up to 55,000 points per night. All category 1-4 hotels can be booked with these certs. Additionally, category 5-7 hotels can be booked with these certs when priced at the lower end of the range.
50K Certs: These can be used on properties costing up to 65,000 points per night. Like 40K certs, these can be used to book any category 1-4 hotel. Additionally, category 5-8 hotels can be booked with these certs when priced at the mid or lower end of the range.
85K Certs: These can be used on properties costing up to 100,000 points per night. All category 1-6 hotels can be booked with these certs. Additionally, category 7, 8 and 9 hotels can be booked with these certs when priced at the lower end of the range.
None of the Exception hotels can be booked with any free night certificates.
Chart History
The following chart shows Marriott’s maximum pricing over time. This is a way to see Marriott’s point-price inflation. For example, between early 2022 to late 2023, the maximum price for category 5 hotels increased from 40,000 points to 69,000 points. That was a 72.5% increase. And then in 2025 the price increased to 76,000 points, which is a 10% increase over the 2023 price and a 90% increase over the early 2022 price.
| Category | Max thru 3/29/22 | Max Late 2023 | Max Early 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10,000 | 16,000 | 18,000 |
| 2 | 15,000 | 23,000 | 28,000 |
| 3 | 20,000 | 25,000 | 36,500 |
| 4 | 30,000 | 46,000 | 55,000 |
| 5 | 40,000 | 69,000 | 76,000 |
| 6 | 60,000 | 76,000 | 88,000 |
| 7 | 70,000 | 92,000 | 105,000 |
| 8 | 100,000 | 130,000 | 140,000 |
| 9 | N/A | 150,000 | 152,000 |
| >9 | N/A | 385,000 | 605,000 |
Bottom Line
Marriott still maintains an award chart but it’s hidden from customers. The good news is that, at least for now, award prices aren’t fully dynamic. This means that even when a hotel’s cash rate is astronomically high, the point price (if available) won’t be more than the top price in the award chart. So, it’s still possible to get far outsized value from Marriott points under the right circumstances.
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[…] Marriott’s secret award chart (Updated with the latest devaluation numbers) […]
Sorry, I didn’t realize that the instructions for finding the category has changed since last publication. I’ve updated that section with new instructions.
Still no-go for me.
It looks like you have to either log into your Marriott account for this to work, or use a browser where you’ve recently logged in.
Thanks for sharing. As others have mentioned, the calendar view did not work for me either, but viewing the page source from the hotel’s home page did. This also confirms I found a great “mistake” award a few weeks ago…scored 5 nights at a Cat 9 boutique hotel for 176k points total. Hotel staff have already reached out via email to confirm my stay, so not worried about them canceling the booking. Woohoo!
I’ve searched a few properties and the category level comes up as 0. Zero.
Me too: “prop_rewards_category_level”:”0″
My search shows up at “0”. St. Regis Atlanta
Hi, the calendar view method doesn’t work anymore. Try doing it from the hotel’s homepage instead.
This is one example: https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/begxr-the-st-regis-belgrade/overview/
Is it still working for you? I’d checked a few hotels last night on the homepages and the prop_rewards_category_level was there — now I can’t find it in those same pages’ source…
Yes, it still works for me. You need to go to the room’s listing page first and then click on the hotel’s logo which should open a new tab to the hotel’s homepage. Then, view page source from the homepage.
Just going straight to the homepage without doing the previous steps seem to be the reason why it doesn’t work.
Yup, that worked! Looks like they’re working hard to eventually remove the category from the HTML pages completely (even if it exists in their back-end software to calculate prices/points)…
Just a speculation . . . I wonder if certain properties are exempted from the scheme and receive a zero category.
Hi,
Viewing page source from calendar view no longer works. Go to the hotel’s Marriott main page and do it from there.
[…] Marriott’s secret award chart. […]
[…] Frequent Miler flags how Seal The Deal Travels discovered that Marriott Bonvoy still assigns hotels categories when it comes to points redemptions, and there’s a minimum and maximum range of award pricing at each of those categories. […]
I would say the lowest rate for cat 8 is 53,500 or lower. thats what I get for Wailea Beach Resort next week.
You would need to look over a period of time to see of points change with increased price. And yes it is dynamic, if you look at your chart Cat6 43-73k points is not static and far from what it was years ago. Back then Category was fixed or only slight seasonal differences.
I have seen rooms get more expensive in $ and points, keeping the ration to around .67cent per point (incl tax/fee that are covered by points).
Searched one date at the W South Beach and it’s a category 9 for 70K points, so this “chart” isn’t very accurate.
Does any of this matter if prices vary this much?
The low-end points are most likely to be incorrect because it can be hard to find hotels priced at the lowest end possible.
High-end may also be inaccurate, e.g. Westin Paris — cat 7, but often charges 97-98K. However, the table might be useful as a planning guide for future stays once one knows the category and approx range.
Thank you for your finding! Westin Paris was not one of the Cat 7’s I’ve checked.
The numbers can get updated and it’s great now that there are many more pairs of eyes to help with more findings. Thankfully, Cat 7 is still within the possibility of 85k cert redemption even with the 98k top, at least for now.
Sure, glad to help. (Marriott Opera also cat 7 -> 95K redemptions some dates.) As a aside, these were doable with 50K last year pre-top-off IIRC, then switched to limits of 50K+top-off, now often charge 85K+top-off ranges!
These award prices for Marriott properties are getting absolutely insane on the top end. Considering that most Hilton hotels (even the super nice ones during peak season) still seem to top out at 110K per night for a standard room and the HH FNA certs are usable for any standard award night, any day of the week, I’d say that Hilton now has a far superior awards program to Marriott if you are considering high-end properties (which many of us point enthusiast are). I can’t believe that Marriott’s program has gotten so devalued in just about a year. 100K used to be the upper limit and now that has increased by 50% in less than 2 years. Shame on you Marriott.
St. Regis and Ritz-Carlton Maldives are category 9C. Le Meridien Maldives is category 6.
You can also find the page’s source code by simply typing “view-source:” (without quotes) in front of the url. This works particularly well when using a device like a phone when you do not have the option to right click.
The Marriott 85k FNCs are worth less and less these days and are effectively mid tier certificates. The Hilton FNCs make the Aspire card a significantly better value proposition compared to the Bonvoy Brilliant.
Used Marriott points and currently staying at the RCR Dorado. Verses cash price it was a ok deal for points ~ 1.1 cent per point, including 5th night redemption. We’ve been wanting to check out this property and it’s certainly beautiful. Thanks for this post, it will be very useful for future redemptions.
As cash prices have moved up, it is understandable that point prices have moved up. However, Marriott has not increased the allowable points on its various Free Night Certificates in like fashion. As you note, certificates have become less usable than they once were. Also, limiting use of FNCs to base rooms makes them even less attractive. Moreover, the Ritz Carlton Card’s club upgrades are limited to standard rooms and not suites. These policies disincline me from wanting to hold Marriott’s premium credit cards.