Possible bonus on buying Marriott points

Bougie Miles reports a very interesting finding regarding the purchase of Marriott Bonvoy points. Ordinarily, Marriott Bonvoy point purchases are processed through Points.com, which means that those purchases do not code as travel or Marriott spend for the purposes of credit card bonus categories or special offers. However, it seems that there is a unique way in which your purchase may trigger a credit card bonus category. This may be a non-event because the purchase price when buying the way Bougie Miles advises is not particularly good — but it’s possible that it might be worthwhile in some instances.

If you have ever been short of the number of points necessary for a Marriott reservation, you are likely familiar with the ability to take a points advance as shown above (see this post for more on Marriott points advance). If you do not quite have enough points to cover an award stay (but you’re close to enough points), Marriott essentially allows you to make the reservation and earn the points later (you typically need to have them a couple of weeks ahead of your reservation or it may be cancelled).

I’ve always mostly ignored the bullet option above that — in the screen shot above, it shows the ability to purchase 7,000 points for $87.50. That is a rate of 1.25c per point. That is far above our Reasonable Redemption Value of 0.72c per point and higher than the ~0.8c per point at which Marriott points go on sale several times per year. For that reason, I’ve never been tempted to be a buyer.

However, Bethany at Bougie Miles did recently make such a purchase and she used a card that earns a bonus on travel. Interestingly, rather than the points purchase being processed by Points.com, it was processed by Marriott Rewards and therefore earned a travel bonus (though it did not trigger the Marriott Amex Offer in her case).

Her experience with this makes me wonder if such a purchase may trigger the current temporary 10x bonus on Marriott purchases being offered on the Chase Marriott cards (see this post for more detail). I still wouldn’t be interested at 1.25c per point. However, Bethany poses a question to which I don’t know the answer: does the price to purchase points to complete a reservation (as shown above — i.e. you don’t have quite enough for a reservation you’re trying to make) also get discounted when points are on sale? If points were on sale for let’s say 0.8c per point and you could stack that with 10x Marriott points on the purchase price, that might make a points purchase more appealing.

My bet is that this points purchase runs entirely differently than those processed by Points.com and therefore I would bet that the points price to buy the rest of the points you need for a reservation is likely a fixed 1.25c all the time. If I’m correct about that, this ability to earn a category bonus isn’t very appealing at all in my opinion. However, if I’m wrong, it would be something worth keeping in mind for anyone who might purchase points during a sale in the future.

See the post at Bougie Miles for more detail.

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