(EXPIRED) (Update: Extended Through 11/10/20) New Marriott Promo: Earn 2,500 Bonus Points Per Stay + 1 Time 5,000 Bonus Points After 3rd Stay

Update 10/17/20: This promotion has been extended through November 10, 2020.

~

It’s been a couple of months since they’ve had a promotion running, but Marriott has finally returned with a new bonus points offer.

Unless you’ll be booking one night stays though, their new offer isn’t very compelling. It is a little better than their past few promotions though as you earn bonus points starting on your first stay.

The Deal

• Earn 2,500 bonus Marriott Bonvoy points per stay, as well as a one-time bonus of 5,000 points after your third stay,
• Direct link to registration.

Key Terms

• Registration of your Marriott Bonvoy account is required.
• Marriott Bonvoy members who register for this promotion will earn 2,500 bonus points per eligible paid stay, plus a one-time bonus of 5,000 additional points after 3 eligible paid stays, during the promotion earning period.
• The promotion registration and earning period is between August 13, 2020, and October 18 November 10, 2020, at participating Marriott Bonvoy properties.
• Only stays made after registration will qualify towards the promotion.
• A “stay” is defined as consecutive nights spent at the same hotel, regardless of check-in/checkout activity on any Points-eligible rate (“Qualifying Rate”).
• Rates available through most third-party online retailers and select travel agency rates do not qualify for this promotion.
• Homes & Villas by Marriott International, ExecuStay, Marriott Executive Apartments and Marriott Vacation Club owner-occupied weeks are not eligible for bonus points, and nights spent while redeeming an award are not eligible for bonus points.
• Only one room per hotel is counted toward a member’s nights or stay.
• Bonus points will be awarded to the member’s account up to 6 weeks after the promotion ends.
• A member who elects to earn miles is not eligible for this promotion.

Quick Thoughts

As mentioned earlier, this promotion is better than most of Marriott’s recent promotions because you’ll earn 2,500 bonus points from your very first stay, whereas their past promotions have only awarded bonus points from your second stay. Those promotions also only offered 2,000 points per stay, so this new one is an additional 500 points per stay, as well as 5,000 bonus points extra if you stay three times.

While that’s a positive development, Marriott’s bar was laying on the ground in the past, so raising it took very little effort.

Seeing as bonus points are awarded per stay, this offer is best for people who book one or two night stays. For those of us who book longer stays, a total of 2,500 points isn’t going to move the needle. For example, that’s only just over 350 bonus points per night for a week-long stay – nice to have if you were going to be booking with Marriott anyway, but not worth moving a stay from another chain, especially seeing as most other hotel chains are offering more rewarding promotions themselves right now. You can check all the current hotel promotions here.

There are a couple of additional things to note regarding this promotion. First, you have to register for the promo, but it’s YMMV as to whether you’ll be able to do that. We were able to register my wife’s account, but not mine. We book all our stays under my account as I’m the one with status, so it figures that I’m seemingly not targeted. I’ll keep trying to register each week though just in case something changes.

Update: Jason mentioned in the comments below that he sent a message to Marriott via their website after getting the same registration error message and was able to have them enroll him in the promotion. I just sent a DM to Marriott Bonvoy Assist on Twitter and within an hour I was registered for the promotion, so it’s definitely worth reaching out to them if you have problems with registration.

A second thing to note is that only paid stays are valid for this promotion, not award stays. That’s a little bit of a shame because if you could book a one night award stay at an off-peak category 1 property, getting 2,500 points back would be an excellent way to rack up elite nights cheaply, especially if you only need a handful of nights.

Overall, it’s nice to see Marriott returning with a new promotion which is a little more rewarding than in the past, but it’s still disappointing in comparison to most promotions being run by other hotel loyalty programs.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.